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Laymon

Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon is the author of the NAACP Image Award winning novel, Long Division and the essay collection, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. Laymon’s bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir, won the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the 2018 Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times. Laymon is the Libby Shearn Moody Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University and founder of the Catherine Coleman Arts and Justice Initiative.