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Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction 2019
Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction 2018
Finalist for the Kirkus Prize 2018
Longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize 2019

In this crackling debut collection Nafissa Thompson-Spires interrogates our supposedly post-racial era. To wicked and devastating effect she exposes the violence, both external and self-inflicted, that threatens black Americans, no matter their apparent success.

A teenager is insidiously bullied as her YouTube following soars; an assistant professor finds himself losing a subtle war of attrition against his office mate; a nurse is worn down by the demand for her skills as a funeral singer. And across a series of stories, a young woman grows up, negotiating and renegotiating her identity.

Heads of the Colored People shows characters in crisis, both petty and catastrophic. It marks the arrival of a remarkable writer and an essential and urgent new voice.

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"The level of detail that goes into each of Nafissa Thompson-Spires´s sentences is astonishing, and the worlds that she can create in just a few words are mind-blowing. Ready yourself for this collection. It will change the way you look at writing, and at how you see things" Candice Carty-Williams

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Nafissa Thompson-Spires is a prize-winning short story writer. She earned a PhD in English from Vanderbilt University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The White Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, StoryQuarterly, Lunch Ticket and The Feminist Wire, among other publications. She is a 2016 participant of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, a 2017 Tin House workshopee, and a 2017 Sewanee Writers Conference Stanley Elkin Scholar. Born in San Diego, California, she now lives in Illinois with her husband where she is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and African American studies at the University of Illinois.

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