Welcome to Braggsville

Born in New Orleans, T. Geronimo Johnson received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and his M.A. in Language, Literacy, and Culture from UC Berkeley. He has taught writing and held fellowships—including a Stegner Fellowship and an Iowa Arts Fellowship—at ASU, Iowa, Berkeley, Western Michigan University and Stanford. He is also a curriculum designer for Bay Area non-profits and director of the UC Berkeley Summer Creative Writing Program. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Best New American Voices, the Indiana Review, the LA Review, and Illuminations, among other literary publications. His first novel Hold It ’Til It Hurts was a finalist for the 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. He is currently a visiting professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He lives in Berkeley, California.

'The most dazzling, most unsettling, most oh-my-God-listen-up novel you'll read this year. T. Geronimo Johnson plays cultural criticism like it's acid jazz. His shockingly funny story pricks every nerve of the American body politic. Welcome to Braggsville. It's about time.' The Washington Post Audacious, unpredictable, exuberant and even tragic, in the most classic meaning of the word ... A heady mix of satire and hyperbole. At times, Welcome to Braggsville reads like a literary hybrid of David Foster Wallace and Colson Whitehead.' Los Angeles Times Book Review 'As daring a literary high-wire act as has come along in some time ... Frequently and unabashedly funny ... A volatile mix of stinging satire, linguistic pyrotechnics and heartbreaking narrative.' San Francisco Chronicle 'A rollicking satire ... Radical, hilarious, tragic, and all too relevant' O Magazine 'Ghastly and funny and gloriously provocative ... Johnson's prose is by turns scathing dark humour, soaring lyricism, and a quietly devastating analysis of every species of injustice. The result is a kind of mind-melting poetry - a linguistic electroconvulsive therapy for the reader. This book will wake you up!' Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia! 'Transcendence is what Geronimo Johnson achieves in this remarkable novel. Every racial assumption is both acknowledged and challenged in ways at times hilarious, at other times poignant. Welcome to Braggsville is ambitious, wise, and brave.' Ron Rash, author of Serena 'Surprising, heartbreaking, tragicomic, and deeply disturbing' Jaimy Gordon, author of Lord of Misrule 'As smart as it is subversive, and as bleakly hilarious as it is deeply necessary' Jennifer du Bois, author of A Partial History of Lost Causes 'Welcome to Braggsville is the best and most powerful form of satire; it sets fire to your brain while expanding your heart. Big, shiny literary prizes were created for books like this one' Wiley Cash, author of This Dark Road to Mercy