Brontez Purnell is the author of a graphic novel, a novella, a children’s book, the novel Since I Laid My Burden Down, and, most recently, 100 Boyfriends, which won the 2022 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Fiction, was longlisted for the 2022 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award and the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, and was named an Editors’ Choice by The New York Times Book Review. The recipient of a 2018 Whiting Writers’ Award for Fiction and the 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Robert Rauschenberg Award, he was named one of the "32 Black Male Writers of Our Time" by The New York Times Style Magazine in 2018. Born in Triana, Alabama, he’s lived in Oakland, California, for 20 years.
Reading(s) will be streamed via the Creative Writing Program's YouTube Channel.