Writing News

2023

2022

Dion Graham wins 2022 Earphone Award for his reading of Dirty Bird Blues. The award is given by Audio File to truly exceptional titles that excel in narrative voice and style, characterizations, suitability to audio, and enhancement of the text.
Review: Dion Graham gives a virtuoso performance of fictional bluesman Manfred (Man) Banks. Graham sings, riffs, wails, and weeps as he takes listeners into the soul of the protagonist. With perfect pacing and timing, Graham also explores the depth of emotions of the various other characters–from a toddler to women who work in a salon–whom he ingeniously emulates. His ability to capture various African-American accents is exceptional. His most impressive work comes with revealing Man’s convoluted inner life, which booze compromises and life complicates. The author, a poet, painter, and professor, has written dictionaries of African-American slang, and his knowledge is richly displayed. This audiobook marks the 25th anniversary of the novel’s initial publication. The listener is in for an enjoyable journey to 1950s America. A.D.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award.

2021

Nov 15, 2021, poem, “The End of the World,” featured in The New Yorker
November: Clarence Major will be inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in November 2021
October: Thunderclouds in the Forecast to be published by Northwestern University Press
Dirty Bird Blues re-released as a Penguin Classic with a foreword by Yusef Komunyakaa and an introduction by John Beckman
June: The Lurking Place published by Manic D Press, Inc.
Summer: four new poems and one painting featured in the Summer 2021 issue of The American Scholar
Four new poems in Chicago Quarterly Review

2020 and before