Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is an American speculative fiction author who wrote the short story collection Friday Black (2018) and his debut novel Chain-Gang All-Stars (2023). He was named one of "5 under 35 Authors" by the National Book Foundation in 2018 and won the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award in 2019.
Early life and education
Adjei-Brenyah was born in the Bronx, New York but grew up in Spring Valley, New York. Both of his parents are from Ghana. His father was a defense attorney and his mother was a kindergarten teacher. Adjei-Brenyah started writing from a young age and wrote for his high school's literature magazine.
Adjei-Brenyah went to University at Albany, SUNY for his undergraduate degree, where he learned from Lynne Tillman. He later attended the graduate writing program at Syracuse University with the goal to study with George Saunders in the creative writing program. Saunders later became his thesis adviser and mentor. Adjei-Brenyah later went on to teach in the same program.
After college, Adjei-Brenyah became interested in prison abolition and worked at the Rockland Coalition to End the New Jim Crow.
Writing career
Adjei-Brenyah's published works are set in near-future dystopias. They often explore the topics of exploitation, capitalism, and the societal acceptance of violence.
Friday Black
Adjei-Brenyah's debut book is a collection of 12 satirical short stories exploring many topics, including racism in modern-day America, consumerism, school shootings, and generational violence. Vulture described the book as "an irreverent, genre-bending approach to ripped-from-the-headlines subject matter".
Chain-Gang All-Stars
Adjei-Brenyah's first novel is set in a dystopian America where imprisoned people have the choice to leave prison by joining a gladiatorial system called the "CAPE" or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment program where they take part in televised duels to the death as part of alliances called Chain Gangs. If they manage to survive three years of battles, then they are freed. The book has a large cast and is written from the perspective of multiple people participating in the program, as well as activists fighting against it, fans, and the people running it.
The book is a fictional novel but features many footnotes citing current laws and factual statistics about the incarceration system in the United States.
Chain-Gang All-Stars started as a short story for inclusion in Friday Black, but became too long. Adjei-Brenyah has said that he developed it into a novel because he felt he needed to spend more time exploring the main character, Loretta Thurwar.
Chain-Gang All-Stars is shortlisted for the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction.