Moniz, Dantiel W.

Dantiel W. Moniz’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, Tin House, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, Joyland, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and elsewhere. Milk Blood Heat: Stories (Grove Press), comprising 11 short works, is her first book. The collection depicts the lives of Floridians in intergenerational tales that contemplate human connection, race, womanhood, inheritance, and the elemental darkness in us all. Set among cities and suburbs, each story delves into the ordinary worlds of young girls, women, and men who find themselves confronted by extraordinary moments of violent personal reckoning. A 13-year-old meditates on her sadness and the difference between herself and her white best friend when an unexpected tragedy occurs. A woman recovering from a miscarriage sees her dead daughter in her daily life and cannot let go. A teenager resists her family’s church, and they accuse her of courting the devil. Kirkus described it as a “powerful debut collection” and “a wonderland of deep female characters navigating their lives against the ever changeable backdrop of Florida.”