Author’s Corner

We treat the recent works of local authors from independent publishers like national bestsellers by spotlighting them across all our programming and through community collaborations.

Our Spotlighted

September Author

Authors Corner Page

Mai Sennaar

Author of They Dream in Gold

Mai's Bio

​Mai Sennaar is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. The Smithsonian Affiliate Museum of the African Diaspora, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and the Classical Theatre of Harlem are among the venues that have presented her plays. Her short film Wax Lovers’ Playlist premiered at AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center and was an Official Selection of the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival. She is the book writer for Carry On!, a new musical by Broadway composer Diana Wharton-Sennaar and the creative director of the performing arts company MWPLive. They Dream in Gold is her first novel. She lives between Baltimore and Dakar.

Synopsis

Epic in scope but intimate in its portraiture, They Dream in Gold is a kaleidoscopic novel exploring the diasporic hunger for belonging. Moving through the hotbeds of the African Diaspora—from colonial West Africa on the brink of revolution to Brazil during Carnival season—it is a deeply affecting ode to the people and places that shape our identities, and a powerful testament to our shared humanity.

Excerpt

His pillow ruptures between her knees. Feathers plucked from the breasts of live geese burst into the darkness of the room. She watches them by the flashes of the storm’s lightning.

Some descend into the gaps of the floorboards; others wilt between the poles of the hot water pipes. They land in her palms, along her pregnant stomach, and on the meeting of her thighs.

August, the third month since his departure, begins today and Mansour and his musicians have still not returned from their three-week tour of Spain. The last of her American cash has now been converted into francs, then tokens, and emptied into the phone booth around the corner. She’s memorized the flat note of the dial tone.

Having not reached him since May, she is finally imagining the worst. Frantic, swollen, urinating often, she goes about naked beneath her nightgown as the night ends. For several days, she has found calm in smoking out of her small attic window and watching the summer storm rage through Switzerland. And though the storm has not left, this morning, fondling the nightstand as the sun rises, she discovers that her last cigarette is gone.

With the dawn, a mix of frying tomatoes, couscous, and dehydrated fish rises from the kitchen below. Beside it, the living room downstairs houses the restaurant of Mansour’s mother, Eva, and the grand opening is two days away.

Blurbs

“A symphonic feat of wisdom and breathtaking verve, They Dream in Gold is a revelation of a novel that readers won’t soon forget. Spanning continents and decades of sociopolitical changes, this wholly original, whirlwind story deftly illuminates the tensions of art and humanity with fresh language and vivid characters. Mai Sennaar is a rare, daring talent who wrings emotion and beauty from each page, each word, and leaves you thirsting for more still.”

– Thao Thai, author of Banyan Moon 

“A mouthwatering delight. A reader traverses half the globe through this story, becomes a singer and a dancer and a chef; and is welcomed into a formidable community of women where love is the unshakeable glue.”

– Sarah Jessica Parker, SJP Lit

“Extraordinary…a powerful and poignant exploration of the African diaspora and global Black identity…This book moves like the storm Sennaar begins it with, revealing how we are all interlinked in a global community, just as these characters, timelines and narratives are entangled.”

– New York Times

Our Spotlighted

August Author

Paul Jaskunas

Paul Jaskunas

Author of The Atlas of Remedies

Paul's Bio

Paul Jaskunas is the author of two novels: The Atlas of Remedies (Stillhouse Press) and Hidden (Free Press), which won the Friends of American Writers Award. A chapbook of his poems, Mother Ship, will be released by Finishing Line Press in Fall 2024. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, America, Tab, Little Patuxent Review, and the Vilnius Review, among many other publications. Since 2008, he has taught literature and writing at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, where he edits Full Bleed, an annual journal devoted to the intersection of the visual and literary arts.  www.jaskunas.com.

Synopsis

Frightened that the grippe will steal away the life of her beloved cousin Marija, the only family she has in New York, Karolina steps out into the cold and unforgiving city streets to buy chamomile flowers, a tried-and-true remedy from her old life in Lithuania. Meanwhile, her children struggle to navigate through Cossack-occupied Europe to reach the port of Hamburg and sail to America for a desperately sought reunion.

Set in 1901, Paul Jaskunas’s multi-generational immigrant saga-in-miniature nimbly blends historical realism with a dreamlike aesthetic to create a unique and arresting portrait of one family hoping that America will make good on its promise.

Excerpt

One black dawn, in the winter of 1901, the children’s uncle rose to hunt. The boy, in bed, waited until he could no longer hear the sound of the man’s boots breaking the crust of snow in the yard. Then he looked at his older sister Ona, who slept beside him in bed. He could see her breath in the air. Their uncle had neglected to start the fire, so Lukas crept into the kitchen and, as quietly as he could, placed split logs of pine into the ashy stove. She continued sleeping as he lit the fire and built it up fierce and hot. If he made the house warm enough, she wouldn’t wake from the cold, and he could slip away unseen. 

He stretched and kicked the stove door closed with his bare foot. Through the grate, the flames made soft shadows leap on the wall. By their light, he could see the remains of his uncle’s breakfast—a half-eaten sausage and a hunk of black bread. He sliced these thinly with a knife and ate them together, stuffing his mouth and chewing fast as he knelt before the stove to warm himself. He watched the flames through the grate in a trance, fixing in his mind the wide orbit of the sun swinging over New York, shining upon his mother’s shoulders. Holding an apple in one hand, an egg in another, his sister had explained to him the mystery of the sun being two places at once. Still, it wasn’t easy to grasp the simultaneity of his dawn and his mother’s noon. 

He dressed in silence, in his warmest clothes, his coat, and boots. Avoiding the creaky boards in the floor, he went to a high shelf and stood on a stool to reach a Jesus figurine carved from oak. Inside its hollow core, he found a small purse of leather. He spilled three coins into his hand and pocketed them. Then he went into the cold, closing the wood door gently. 

The forest loomed across the yard. He paused before it, considering the dark spaces between trees. As he began to walk, the sound of the snow breaking under his boots gave him courage. 

It was four kilometers to the village. The way would take him through long stretches of forest and marshland now trapped in ice. Tall pines with cinnamon-colored trunks held snow in their branches. Invisible creatures had inscribed the white forest floor with ink-like tracings. Elk roamed these woods, and his uncle was hunting them even now, at first light, when every twig and log looked touched by the grace of a wintery god. Lukas had walked long enough to feel the cold in his toes when he heard the first shot echo through the pines. 

There would be a corpse in the yard tonight. The children would be expected to strip the hide and butcher the meat amid a hot glut of gore. He’d rather eat old potatoes all winter than confront the bloodied face of the elk.

Blurbs

“Like any good fairy tale told over a steaming cup of chamomile tea by a winter fire, this short book delights with dark woods, perilous quests, animal familiars, and kindly strangers, but its simplicity is deceptive, and it soon weaves into a gentle meditation on worlds Old and New, on losses big and small, and on the gift of human connection, both familial and fleeting. One of the most moving stories I have read in recent years.” 

— Olga Grushin, author of The Charmed Wife and Forty Rooms 

“Written with acute observation, this is a beautifully told tale of separation, hardship and longing that will move and enthrall. I loved these people and never wanted to leave them.”

— Edward Carey, author of Little and The Swallowed Man

Our Authors

Previously Spotlighted

What We Do

For Our Authors

“Being in the Author’s Corner has been one of the most fruitful and satisfying experiences of my career.”

– Cameron MacKenzie

Next Cycle:

Books published between
September 2024 – September 2025

Apply:

Accepting applications
December 1 - January 31

Step Into the Spotlight

Next cohort will be featured
March - November 2025