Jamel Brinkley via Matrix

Jamel Brinkley
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
I CURATE

Network Node

Name: Jamel Brinkley
City/Place: California
Country: United States
Hometown: Bronx, New York

CURATION

from this node by: Matrix+

Life & Work

Bio: Jamel Brinkley is the author of A Lucky Man: Stories (2018), a finalist for the National Book Award, the Story Prize, the John Leonard Prize, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and winner of a PEN Oakland Award and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence.

His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in A Public Space, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Gulf Coast, The Threepenny Review, Glimmer Train, American Short Fiction, The Believer, and Tin House, and has been anthologized twice in The Best American Short Stories.

His work has received support from Kimbilio Fiction, the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Lannan Foundation. He was the 2016-2017 Carol Houck Smith Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and a 2018-2020 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Raised in Brooklyn and the Bronx, he teaches at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Contact Information

Management/Booking: Jin Auh, Literary Agent
[email protected]
The Wylie Agency
250 West 57th St, Ste. 2114
New York, NY 10107
Tel. 212-246-0069

Media | Markets

▶ Twitter: jamelbrinkley
▶ Website: http://www.jamelbrinkley.com
▶ Stories: http://www.jamelbrinkley.com/writing

Quotes, Notes & Etc. "Among A Lucky Man’s many wonderful accomplishments — the way the length of each story affords its characters room to move; the use of linear, progressive time to knit the individual stories into a social fabric, à la Alice Munro or Wideman — one in particular is genuinely path-clearing. Brinkley offers visions of manhood and masculinity that demonstrate candor without false intensity, desire without ownership. His male characters have fictional experiences that, in the hands of the right reader, can become equipment for living."
- LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS

"Set mostly in Brooklyn, the nine stories in this debut collection are full of subtle poignancy... Each story is a trenchant exploration of race and class, vividly conveying the tension between social codes of masculinity and the vulnerable, volatile self."
- THE NEW YORKER

"With this observant book, Brinkley demonstrates an enviable capacity for narrative compression. In the space of 25 pages, he’s capable of creating complex and memorable emotional worlds. This is a very hard thing to do, but in A Lucky Man, he pulls it off in one story after the next."
- MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE

"[A] singular collection... Brinkley's portrait of New York and its edges are full of people who feel contained pushing at the boundaries of their lives... Through pages of peerless prose and startlingly sharp sentences, what ultimately emerges is a constantly reframed argument about the role and power of masculinity."
- L.A. TIMES

"[A Lucky Man] is intent on recognizing what masculinity looks like, questioning our expectations of it, and criticizing its toxicity — and somehow managing to do all of that with love. . . . And while it's clearly a topic that concerns him, Brinkley's book isn't only about masculinity. It also deals in family relationships, love, aging, loss, and disappointment — the universal themes that keep us coming back to literature — while also conveying versions of black male experience. In fact, the collection may include only nine stories, but in each of them, Brinkley gives us an entire world."
- NPR BOOKS

"With equal parts precision and poetry, these nine audacious stories step into the minefields awaiting boys of color as they approach manhood in Brooklyn and the Bronx—testing the limits of relationships, social norms, and their own definitions of masculinity."

- O: THE OPRAH MAGAZINE
"One of the many striking qualities in Brinkley’s stories is how precarious his male characters tend to be, so uncertain, deep down, of their cocky masculinity. He observes his characters from a small distance, watching patiently as their swagger, their anger, their love and lust deflate like a leaky balloon. It’s an extraordinary process to witness... Brinkley’s stories ... together become a series of small tragedies."
- THE PARIS REVIEW (STAFF PICKS)

"In Brinkley’s work, no character is left untended, no aspect of identity is overlooked, and the results are well-inhabited worlds that feel infinite. A lot of short stories exist in a snow globe, but the nine stories presented here are each a big bang. They burst forth through space and time. They are larger than the sum of their components... A Lucky Man is not only a standout debut for the year, but also a testament to what can be achieved in a short story."
- CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS

"Brinkley’s commitment to creating complex characters and allowing them to exist as they are, regardless of the consequences, is one of his many strengths. . . . The precision through which Brinkley employs detail gives his stories such a rich and singular feel that it’s hard to compare him to anybody."
- THE ADROIT JOURNAL

"There’s something magical about a great story collection... In A Lucky Man, Jamel Brinkley’s stunning debut collection, the stories are not formally linked, and yet they are, implicitly, by their beautiful prose, by their intimate gaze at character, by their focus on black men, by their setting in New York City. These are stories that can be read again and again... A collection as fine as this, of fiction that is reflecting our world and searching for the truth, is one to be treasured, read and reread, admired, and loved."
- PLOUGHSHARES

"In this tight, polished story collection, Brinkley tackles issues related to masculinity, fatherhood (including the impact of absentee fathers), and the multi-faceted ugly beast of racism and the lives it has marred... This is an assured and important collection that could not be more timely."
- KENYON REVIEW

"A Lucky Man ... is an urgent collection that compels us to reconsider the ways we understand manhood... This collection gives a deeply human and deeply affecting account of living in the world, of searching for connection and longing for love. A Lucky Man demands our attention. Few works in the frenetic energy of the modern moment are capable of capturing us as fully. Brinkley’s prose, the ferocity and authenticity of his narratives do; they astound and wound."
- THE MASTERS REVIEW

"Brinkley explores black men under both the pressurized violence and bottled up tenderness that undoes them at every turn. This is a book that acknowledges male stereotypes while subverting them and exploring the psychic damage they leave in their wake... A Lucky Man is as compulsive to read as an addictive novel."
- KQED ARTS - THE SPINE

"Told in nine vivid short stories, Jamel Brinkley’s debut collection, A Lucky Man, tugs sharply at the tender threads of intimacy, race, and masculinity. Brinkley’s prose, as fierce in its vigilance as it is in its empathy, casts new light on the delicate and heartbreaking truisms of American manhood... Each of Brinkley’s true-to-life stories offers the reader marvelous depth and insight..."
- DUENDE

"Brinkley’s first collection portrays young African American men struggling with fathers, brothers, and friends, present or absent. What impresses first is the length and strength, the sheer weightiness of each detailed and meditative story. Brinkley doesn’t flick off moments but shows how each contains multitudes... Fully developed stories that readers will savor."
- LIBRARY JOURNAL

"A Lucky Man will be introduced to syllabi across the country and beyond upon its release, that much is certain. The fact that it is a debut is astonishing. Brinkley innately understands the pulses and rhythms of the English language. Every short story could only have been written sentence by limpid sentence, weighed in the mouth before set to the page."
- THE WILDS

"An assured debut collection of stories about men and women, young and old, living and loving along the margins in Brooklyn and the Bronx... It’s difficult to single out any story as most outstanding since they are each distinguished by Brinkley’s lyrical invention, precise descriptions of both emotional and physical terrain, and a prevailing compassion toward people as bemused by travail as they are taken aback by whatever epiphanies blossom before them. A major talent."
- KIRKUS (STARRED REVIEW)

"In nine perceptive stories about broken families, loners, and social outcasts in search of redemption, Brinkley’s stunning debut depicts urban life in all its lonely, wearying detail. Set in Brooklyn and the Bronx, in poor neighborhoods and on school campuses, these tales are imbued with pathos, sexuality, and moments of violence and tenderness. With this memorable collection, Brinkley emerges as a gifted and empathetic new writer."
- BOOKLIST (STARRED REVIEW)

"A Lucky Man is just one of those collections that takes your breath away: the voices we hear, the people we meet, they scratch and pull and ache and rage, revealing secrets we usually keep hidden. Every line is pitch perfect. Jamel Brinkley is a writer of extraordinary talent."
—Daniel Alarcón, author of The King is Always Above the People

"Jamel Brinkley writes the kind of fiction that reads like the whole truth. As his characters —from estranged siblings in Virginia to surrogate families inBrooklyn—love, hurt, challenge, and sometimes save each other, their stories vividly expose our ideas of masculinity and the fumes of racism and injustice in the American air we breathe. A Lucky Man is full of insight and music—a bold, urgent debut."
—Mia Alvar, author of In the Country

"I loved this book. From sentence to sentence, these stories are beautifully written, and they are wonderfully moving and smart about the connections—firm, broken, or mended—between siblings, and parents and their children, and couples who profess to love each other. Jamel Brinkley writes like an angel, but he also knows how low human beings can sometimes go, despite their own best intentions. How does luck, or its absence, visit our lives? Read these stories and find out."
—Charles Baxter, author of There’s Something I Want You To Do

"There’s just no way to overstate this: A Lucky Man is a stunning debut. Richer than most novels, this collection calls a whole world into being, and the names and fates of these people will follow you into your life and never leave. Ambitious themes arc across the entire book—troubled masculinity, family in all its broken forms—but on a lower frequency these are love stories, intimately told. And they could come from no other than Jamel Brinkley, so there’s the pleasure of that encounter too, of hearing a new voice for the first time, and taking a deep plunge into the allegory of an artist’s soul."
—Charles D’Ambrosio, author of Loitering

"The stories in A Lucky Man have a necessary urgency—their characters need to confess or seek comfort, to tell the reader how they’ve been wounded or whose hurt they carry. These stories do not shy away from heartbreak and brutal consequences, but they always remember how much of the way to despair was beautiful and full of tenderness and joy. An unforgettable collection by an important new voice."
—Danielle Evans, author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self

"This is the rare debut that introduces not a promising talent but a major writer, fully formed. The psychological penetration of these stories astonishes me, as do the grace and emotional scope of their sentences. Jamel Brinkley is brilliant, the real thing, a revelation."
—Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You

"A Lucky Man is subtle yet loud, heartbreaking yet utterly unsentimental, uncompromising yet a damn good read. These breathtaking stories find energy in the friction of humanity’s contradictions. In this masterfully written debut, Jamel Brinkley proves he’s got next."
—Mat Johnson, author of Loving Day

"Jamel Brinkley’s stories tell of absence and abandonment, sometimes confronted and sometimes met with resignation, but always edged with pain and beauty. In vibrant yet restrained prose, Brinkley illuminates the longing for home, which lurks in all of us. A magnificent debut."
—Laila Lalami, author of The Moor’s Account

"There’s true magic in Jamel Brinkley’s stories. He finds the subtle and humane lurking within the drama of our lives. Brinkley writes with great insight and honesty about people you’ll recognize, flawed but still worthwhile. By using all his formidable talents, he’s shown us a vision of ourselves."
—Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling

"A Lucky Man is filled with characters who long to become better sons, better fathers, better friends, better lovers. Often they have no words for their complicated feelings. Happily they are the creations of an author who has all the words. Jamel Brinkley is a wonderful writer and these richly imagined stories will stay with the lucky reader long after the last page."
—Margot Livesey, author of Mercury

"The lucky men of Brinkley’s debut are haunted: by the past, by family, by love, and ultimately by masculinity itself. These sober and elegant stories delve deep. A debut of subtlety and power."
—Ayana Mathis, author of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie

"Jamel Brinkley’s A Lucky Man captures so perfectly the myriad ways in which we struggle daily not only for connection but to be heard and understood. At once covert and exuberant, ferocious and tender, heartbreaking and hilarious, these are the stories we always needed. A marvelous debut, glowing with life, and a major new voice in American fiction."
—Paul Yoon, author of The Mountain

My Writing

Publications: In nine powerful stories set in Brooklyn and the South Bronx, A Lucky Man announces the arrival of a significant new voice in fiction. Jamel Brinkley, with incisive and nuanced prose, explores the charged, complex ties between men whose mistakes threaten their relationships with friends, lovers, and family members.

An imaginative young boy from the Bronx goes swimming with his day camp group at a backyard pool in the suburbs, and faces the effects of power and privilege in ways he can barely grasp. A teen intent on proving himself a man at the all-night revel of J’ouvert is preoccupied by watching out for his impressionable younger brother. A pair of college boys on the prowl follow two girls home from a party and have to own the uncomfortable truth of their desires. And at a capoeira conference, two brothers grapple with how to tell the story of their family, caught in the dance of their painful, fractured history.

A striking and indelible debut, A Lucky Man reflects the tenderness and vulnerability of black men and boys whose hopes sometimes betray them, especially in a world shaped by race, gender, and class—where luck may be the greatest fiction of all.

Clips (more may be added)

0:16:05
Jamel Brinkley on "A Lucky Man" at the 2018 Miami Book Fair
By Jamel Brinkley

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Jamel Brinkley Curated

What's Been Happening?

A video was posted re Jamel Brinkley:

Jamel Brinkley on "A Lucky Man" at the 2018 Miami Book Fair
Jamel Brinkley on "A Lucky Man" at the 2018 Miami Book Fair interviewed by Jeffrey Brown
- August 30, 2020
A category was added to Jamel Brinkley:

Iowa Writers' Workshop Faculty
- August 30, 2020
A category was added to Jamel Brinkley:

Novelist
- August 30, 2020
A category was added to Jamel Brinkley:

Short Stories
- August 30, 2020
A category was added to Jamel Brinkley:

Writer
- August 30, 2020
Jamel Brinkley is matrixed!
- August 30, 2020

Made in Brazil!Siga em português →

Sprawled across broad equatorial latitudes…

Stoked and steamed and sensual in the broadest sense of the word…

Limned in prosody & cadenced song…

Conceived in a conundrum wrapped in a smile inside an irony…

A Brazilian Matrix for the entire creative world… Vivaaa!!!!!

Welcome to an INTEGRATED GLOBAL CREATIVE ECONOMY...

"Matrixed!"
—Founding Member Darius Mans (economist, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology), president-elect of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

...from the duct flute player above in Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado's universally-telling image to Quincy Jones to writers & journalists & photographers & poets & painters & filmmakers & chefs & fashion designers & sound designers & impresarios & producers & managers & agents from the four corners of the world to you. And vice versa...

"I'm truly thankful ... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)"
—Nduduzo Makhathini (piano, Blue Note recording artist)

...pathways throughout a creative world becoming ever more inclusive by melding open curation with the enchanted mathematics of the small world phenomenon, that "magic" which positions billions of us around the planet within some 6 or so steps of each other, those inside this matrix tending to within potentially discoverable steps of all others within, and without.

In a small world, ALL IS CLOSER THAN WE IMAGINE.

"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (klezmer fiddle; founder of The Klezmatics)

The Matrix is the evolutionary metamorphosis of an endeavor which began decades ago as royalty recovery for Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Led Zeppelin, Philip Glass, Jim Hall, Mongo Santamaria, Bob Marley producer Clement "Coxsone" Dodd and magnificent others...

"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (composer; piano)

Dear friend,

The Recôncavo of Bahia, Brazil (the fertile crescent around the great Bay of All Saints) was final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Africans fleeing into the sertão (backlands) were joined by Indigenous fleeing slavery and the possession of their lands, and by Sephardim fleeing the Inquisition in Europe. Three cultures from three continents running for their lives, their confluence forming an unprecedented fourth. Nowhere else but here...

...where our story begins:

You're on a matrix (the transcendent artists above and below are within it) — in the word's original sense of "source" — of recommendations-in-series concatenating around the planet — this matrix (as odd as this might sound) having begun life as a record shop in Brazil. I'm below left, in the shop, with David Dye for World Café/U.S. National Public Radio...

"Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (cello)

Our logo is a cane cutter, designed by Walter Mariano of the Federal University of Bahia

I opened the shop in Salvador, Bahia in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for magisterial Brazilian musicians. Our online shop/matrix "radio" — featured in The Guardian — www.theguardian.com/travel/2020/apr/17/10-best-music-radio-station-around-world — was set up and organized on the laptop barely visible there behind me. The interview itself is online at www.npr.org/2013/07/16/202634814/roots-of-samba-exploring-historic-pelourinho-in-salvador-brazil.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar found us (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...

But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...

And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be — or tend to — at most a handful (or so) of steps away from each other.

So then, all that's necessary to put the Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.

If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix, then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré (guitar & leather hat, below), even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.

...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.

—"Sparrow" Roberts

Years ago in NYC (I've lived here in Brazil for 30 years now) I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).

But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great.

Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.

Beyond beaches and carnival and tragedies urban and ecological, Brazil contains an Incandescent Country analogous in many ways to the Mississippi Delta and Deep South. This is the Brazilian Nordeste (Northeast). From coastal rainforest into a harsh interior humanity bled into a hot cauldron of African, Indigenous and Sephardic peoples running from destruction.

And in astounding irony amidst this suffering, music was born: the primordial samba — chula — which journeyed south to Rio de Janeiro to evolve into the national music of Brazil; hinterland manifestations danced in pairs upon pounded earth by the light of lanterns and the moon (“chula” is a Portuguese-language word meaning something of no value, now transmuted into a term of pride).

No time machine is necessary to hear this abiding art. It’s still out there. People who were raised in it, before the arrival of electricity, radio and records, still live. Paramount among these are João do Boi (John of the Ox; clip below) and Raymundo Sodré (image above). Sodré was yanked from poverty and rocketed to national fame in Brazil: a major label deal, a huge hit blasting from every radio from the Amazonian jungle to the urban jungles of Rio and São Paulo. The hit in question was A Massa, Sodré’s defense of the “little” people, the powerless, Sodré’s people. During the dictatorship Sodré career was destroyed. He fled the country to avoid death. He returned nine years later.

Sodré and João are among the last in a great lineage of masters of the moving music of the Recôncavo and the Brazilian Nordeste’s hardscrabble backlands...

Music which is a powerful, passionate distillation of the genius of a multi-stranded culture born in strife and struggle, in a little-known and less understood part of Brazil. Music to assuage suffering by (dis)virtue of the evil that men do.

Music that the entire world could use right now.

Question: Why do matrix media page headers bear an aleph, first letter of the Hebrew alphabet?

Answer: The Matrix was inspired in (the kabbalah-inspired fiction of) Borges' (marvelous short story) El Aleph, that in the pillar in Cairo's Mosque of Amr, where the universe in its entirety throughout all time is perceivable as an infinite hum from deep within the stone...

This "all-seeing" Brazilian "aleph" doesn't hum, however...it dances and sings...

...potent forces derived from its native ground, the Recôncavo proper, where Bahia's primordial samba is danced to upon pounded earth, under moonlight broken by banana, palm and mango leaves, lifting the souls of its participants almost like something religious, which it was, and gods aside, is (João do Boi, black hat right below, with family & friends in São Braz, Bahia):