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Broome’s memoir, Punch Me Up to the Gods, the winner of the 2021 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, is a deeply felt account of growing up Black and gay in the 1980s. The writer, who joins Shelf Life to chat about Mary Karr's The Liar's Club and Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation, is also recipient of the grand prize in Carnegie Mellon University’s Martin Luther King Jr. Writing Awards, and is the K. Leroy Irvis Fellow and instructor in The Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh.  He  has said, “For a long time, I thought stories functioned mostly as an escape from the quotidian responsibilities and minutiae of life. But I don’t know that I believe stories are a way to escape anymore. I’m starting to believe that they are an essential part of life itself—a necessary element that keeps us moving forward.”