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Works of Radical Imagination

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Happenings at Seven Stories Press

Archive of Kia Corthron

August 31
June 05

The Seven Stories fiction list began with Nelson Algren stories, with titles like "The Face on the Barroom Floor" and "The Lightless Room." These are not exactly beach reads, nor are the books you'll find below. What you will find are novels rooted in this world, presenting the dignity of people struggling to make sense of it and in one way or another to change it.

So, this is another kind of summer fiction list. We hope you'll find much that will challenge, inspire, and engage, in times of darkness and of light.

All titles 50% off for one week only, through June 14, 5:00PM EST.

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December 07
Drumroll please! The winner of the Center for Fiction’s 2016 First Novel Prize is . . . . . . .

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November 21

Our 2016–2017 academic catalog is here. Download the pdf, and send us an email at academic@sevenstories.com for any questions, comments, or desk or examination copy requests! The catalog's introductory letter to educators can be found below.

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October 18

The Price of the Ticket

by Kia Corthron

Originally published in the July/August 2016 issue of The Dramatist

Three years ago I was standing in the lobby of a theater, the typical Broadway cluster-mob awaiting entrance, with more than half the horde African-American. This would be logical, as the show was the musical revue After Midnight, a refurbishing of a prior concert piece entitled Cotton Club Parade celebrating Ellington-era jazz and dance. Inside, my sister and I were led to our orchestra seats, and I looked around: not another black face in sight. It took me a moment to realize that The Mystery of the Vanishing Black Folks likely would have been quickly resolved had we moved up to the balconies. But from where I sat, observing the complexion of the performers versus that of the onlookers, it was the Cotton Club, the Colors entertaining the Caucasians, and that the upper tiers may have been filled with black faces was not exactly comforting, an economically induced throwback to Jim Crow segregation with African Americans relegated to the peanut gallery.

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