THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Edited by two-time National Book Award winner and Women’s Prize shortlisted-author Jesmyn Ward, a timely and groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race in America

In this bestselling collection of essays and poems, Jesmyn Ward gathers a new generation of writers and thinkers to speak on race. From Claudia Rankine to Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Kiese Laymon to Carol Anderson, these voices shine a light on the darkest corners of American history, wrestle with the struggles the country faces today and imagine a better future.

Envisioned as a response to The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin’s groundbreaking 1963 essay collection, The Fire This Time considers the black experience in modern America. Significant progress has been made in the fifty years since Baldwin's essays were published, but America is a long distance away from a post-racial society – a truth that must be confronted if the country is to continue to work towards change.

Baldwin's 'fire next time' is now upon us, and it needs to be talked about. Sage, urgent and impassioned, this is an essential collection edited by one of America’s greatest writers.

A harrowing yet hopeful book about race * Observer *
A stirring anthology that takes more cues from Baldwin than just its title ... Every poem and essay in Ward’s volume remains grounded in a harsh reality * New York Review of Books *
Mixing anecdote, humour, passion, fear, anger and a call to arms, it’s a powerful read -- Unmissable Books to Read this Spring * Stylist *
Powerful ... Alive with purpose, conviction and intellect * New York Times *
To Baldwin’s call we now have a choral response – one that should be read by every one of us committed to the cause of equality and freedom -- Jelani Cobb, Professor of Journalism at Columbia University
This is a book to pick up and tuck under our hearts to see what we can build -- Nikki Giovanni, poet
With this gorgeous chorus - Ward has done the same [as her ancestors]: she has created a world, a space, the one she, herself, was seeking. A new type of belonging, a new place to belong, is exactly what she has given us * LA Review of Books *
This is a book that seeks to place the shock of our own times into historical context and, most importantly, to move these times forward * Vogue *

Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and is currently a professor of creative writing at Tulane University. She is the author of the novels Where the Line Bleeds and Salvage the Bones, which won the 2011 National Book Award, and Sing, Unburied, Sing, which won the 2017 National Book Award. She is also the editor of the anthology The Fire This Time and the author of the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. From 2008-2010, Ward had a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. She was the John and Renée Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi for the 2010-2011 academic year. In 2016, the American Academy of Arts and Letters selected Ward for the Strauss Living Award. She lives in Mississippi.