Jamila Minnicks

Award-winning Fiction Author

Readings &
Lecture Topics
  • Rendering Black Voices Honestly in Literature
  • Trauma & Triumph: Responsibilities of Black Writers
  • Centering Black People in Literature About Our Lives
  • The Importance of Documenting Our Stories
  • Creativity as Activism
  • Creating Space: Your Voice in the Literary Landscape
  • Finding Our Roots: When the Connections Seem Lost
  • Let the People Speak for Themselves: Finding Character Voice and Making it Shine

Biography

“Minnicks reminds us of the way that history gains a buffed gloss when we condense it into smooth movements. Minnicks’ novel keeps us from losing sight of how foggy the path forward actually was.” ―Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“A powerful new voice.” –Jason Mott

Jamila Minnicks’ novel Moonrise Over New Jessup (Algonquin Books, 2023) won the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction and was longlisted for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. This heartfelt and riveting debut is both a celebration of Black joy and a timely examination of the opposing viewpoints that attended desegregation in America. As the story delves smartly into the distinction between the fight for equal rights and the fight for integration, Minnicks “provides a nuanced and realistic portrayal of the personal costs of fighting for change,” observes The New York Times. Of the work, author Robert Jones Jr. says, “I was awestruck by its beauty, rapt by its originality, and astounded by its depth. But what astonished me most was learning that this is a debut. The craftwork is extraordinary. Was this book dreamed into existence? Did the Ancestors themselves place this story in the writer’s mind?”

In 2022, Jamila was awarded a Tennessee Williams scholarship for the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and she also earned a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her short fiction and essays have been published in CRAFT, Catapult, Blackbird, The Write Launch, and elsewhere. Her piece, “Politics of Distraction,” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Jamila is a graduate of the University of Michigan, the Howard University School of Law, and the Georgetown University Law Center. She lives in Washington, DC.

Short Bio

Jamila Minnicks’ novel Moonrise Over New Jessup (Algonquin Books, 2023) won the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. In 2022, she was awarded a Tennessee Williams scholarship for the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and she also earned a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her short fiction and essays have been published in CRAFT, Catapult, Blackbird, The Write Launch, and elsewhere. Her piece, Politics of Distraction, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Minnicks is a graduate of the University of Michigan, the Howard University School of Law, and the Georgetown University Law Center. She lives in Washington, DC.

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