Danez Smith

Danez Smith is a black, queer, poz writer & performer. Danez is the author of Don’t Call Us Dead, a finalist for the National Book Award, and [insert] boy. Their work has been featured widely including on Buzzfeed, The New York Times, PBS NewsHour, Best American Poetry, Poetry Magazine, and on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. They are a member of the Dark Noise Collective and is the co-host of VS with Franny Choi, a podcast sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and Postloudness. Homie (Graywolf Press) is Danez Smith’s anthem about the saving grace of friendship. Rooted in the loss of one of Smith’s close friends, this book comes out of the search for joy and intimacy within a nation where both can seem scarce and getting scarcer. In a country overrun by violence, xenophobia, and disparity, and in a body defined by race, queerness, and diagnosis, it can be hard to survive, and even harder to remember reasons for living. But then the phone lights up, or a shout comes up to the window, and family—blood and chosen—arrives with just the right food and some redemption. Part friendship diary, part bright elegy, part war cry, Homie is Danez’s new book written for Danez’s friends and for you and for yours. The New York Times praised it saying “The radiance of Homie arrives like a shock, like found money, like a flower fighting through concrete […] This is a book full of the turbulence of thought and desire, piloted by a writer who never loses their way.”