Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is a writer based in the Bronx, NY. In his debut novel, Chain-Gang All-Stars, Nana presents us with a dystopian future America where convicted prisoners fight each other to the death in a televised bloodsport. The book is both a blistering critique of the US carceral system and an insistence on the inalienable humanity of every person. In our conversation, Nana and I talked about what satire and dystopia open up for him as a writer, why it’s important to him to implicate both the reader and himself in his work, and how he thinks about prison abolition. Then in the second segment, we talked about the seductive nature of success as an artist in a capitalist society.

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Show Notes:

• Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• Purchase Chain-Gang All-Stars: The Lit Bar (Bronx, NY) | Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Kendrick Lamar - “The Art of Peer Pressure”
• Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah - Friday Black
• Metroidvania (game genre)
• @america_is_the_bad_place
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 128: Anahid Nersessian
• John Keats - “To Autumn”
• Starship Troopers (1997 film)
• John Gardner - The Art of Fiction
• Ta-Nehisi Coates - “Killing Dylan Roof”
• Kadhja Bonet - The Visitor

Transcript Episode Credits

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo