Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, a fiction short story writer, visited Oswego State’s Living Writers Series Oct. 29 when he was invited to the River’s End Bookstore by co-owner Bill Reilly. 

Upon his visit, Adjei-Brenyah was celebrating the first week of his first published book of a collection of short stories, “Friday Black.”

Reilly said when he first started to read “Friday Black,” he felt like he had been hit from the power of his words and had to put the book down for a bit.

As a new and upcoming writer, Adjei-Brenyah joked that some parts of the experience have been “weird,” referencing a two-hour photoshoot for an article about his new book in The New York Times, which he said felt awkward at times because he was not familiar with how to do one.  He said having his book be reviewed felt humbling because “people much smarter are talking about [his] book.”

Many of Adjei-Brenyah’s fiction stories reflect racial realities in the U.S. and aspects of his own life, including his short story, “In Retail,” which follows a narrator who focuses on the small moments in her job that keep her going. The narrator works in the same mall that Adjei-Brenyah worked in, and he used his experience to “find moments while wading through the water” that make the grounding details in the stories believable. He also said he often acts out small, mundane gestures to pull out the right details. In his other stories, the characters face racism, toxic masculinity and mental health.

Adjei-Brenyah said all art often has political implications, like his stories, because he views the outside world and writes about its evident issues.

“If the house is on fire, I’m not going to write about what’s in the fridge,” Adjei-Brenyah said.

Adjei-Brenyah graduated from SUNY Albany with his undergraduate degree and earned his MFA from Syracuse University.

Photo by Kassadee Paulo | The Oswegonian