Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author portrait

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH is the New York Times-bestselling author of Friday Black. His work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Esquire, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. He was a National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honoree, the winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the Saroyan Prize, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award for Best First Book, along with many other honors. Raised in Spring Valley, New York, he now lives in the Bronx.
Chain Gang All Stars: A Read with Jenna Pick

Building a Book: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah Goes In-Depth on Writing His Novel CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS

Books

Chain Gang All Stars: A Read with Jenna Pick

Media

Building a Book: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah Goes In-Depth on Writing His Novel CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS

What Students Will Be Reading: Campus Common Reading Roundup, 2025-26

With the fall semester in full swing, colleges and universities around the country have announced their Common Reading books for the upcoming 2025-26 academic year. We’ve compiled a list of over 286 programs and their title selections from publicly available sources, which you can download here: First-Year Reading 2025-26. We will continue to update this

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Register for the 2026 Penguin Random House First-Year Experience® Conference Author Events!

Penguin Random House Author Events at the 45th Annual First-Year Experience® Conference February 15-18, 2026 Seattle, Washington Hyatt Regency Seattle Click Here to RSVP A complimentary meal and a limited number of books will be available to attendees. Each event will also be followed by an author signing. Interested in hosting one of these authors at

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2026 Catalog for First-Year & Common Reading

We are delighted to present our new First-Year & Common Reading Catalog for 2026! From award-winning fiction, poetry, memoir, and biography to new books about the environment, current events, history, public health, science, social justice, student success, and technology, the titles presented in our common reading catalog will have students not only eagerly flipping through

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FROM THE PAGE: An excerpt from Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain Gang All Stars

Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence In Chain Gang All Stars, two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America’s own.   The Freeing of Melancholia Bishop She felt their eyes, all those executioners. “Welcome, young lady,” said Micky Wright, the premier announcer

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