CAROL TAYLOR

January 1, 1970

Hello Beautiful People,

Happy New Year!

Thanks for signing up for news and information about all things Brown Sugar, which includes me, Carol Taylor.

The Brown Sugar books continue to sell, can I get an amen! My last anthology Wanderlust: Erotic Travel Tales was published to great reviews. Holla!

Taking a break from anthologies--basically editing other people's writing--I've been working on my own. I've been writing an erotic novel and an erotic mystery. Hey I know, erotic, erotic, but stick to what you're known for, right. Not always, I've written a short story that is a departure from what I'm known for. Let me hip you to Bronx Biannual, a hot new literary journal for the hip hop set. But don't let that hip hop stuff confuse you. It's eclectic, surprisingly diverse and full great stories with something for everyone. In it is my short story A Debt to Pay.

Bronx Biannual is edited by Miles Marshall Lewis, writer and former editor of Vibe, and is published by Akashic Books, don't know Akashic, you should. Google it.

As Miles says, "Hiphop is known for invading the stuffiest institutions (think Oscars). Therefore it was only a matter of time before heads bumrushed the exclusive circle of literary journals by doing what we do: starting our own. Bronx Biannual is the most important literary journal in hiphop America. Consider Bronx Biannual an urban Paris Review, or McSweeney's Quarterly Concern from a hiphop standpoint. The journal will publish new writing—fiction, essays, reportage, interviews, poems—twice a year. The intention is to publish both celebrated and unsung writers on a variety of subjects germane to the black aesthetic. Urbane urban literature: bourgeois yet boulevard. Bronx Biannual will be fluid like water. No guiding manifesto per se, no set format. Issues might be published as graphic novels, or with two sheets of metal bound like a spiral notebook and shrink-wrapped in a Mylar sleeve, or with a concept in mind of what the Factory might've come up with had Andy Warhol put out a literary journal. Like XXL magazine edited by Rhodes Scholars at Oxford or Vanity Fair edited in the South Bronx at the Point."

My story A Debt to Pay in the second installation of Bronx Biannual is a noir ode to Iceberg Slim. Don't know who he is, google him. You'll be glad you did.

In his introduction, editor Miles, author, hiphop chronicler, and Bronx native, remarks that the creation of Bronx Biannual, "the journal of urbane urban literature, follows in the footsteps of prior journals linked to cultural movements including Fire!!, published during the Harlem Renaissance, L'Etudiant Noir, created on the brink of the Negritude movement, and Yardbird Reader, founded on the heels of the Black Arts Movement. While such comparisons provide the intellectual setup, this is still hiphop and only one goal really matters: "to publish some dope stories."

I think he's done that. Just look at the contributors and their stories.

"The Story of My Hair" by Bahiyyih Davis
"The Newspaper Man" by Zadie Smith
"Church of the Living Womb Manifesto to Haters" by Liza Jessie Peterson
"The Wu-Tang Candidate" by Miles Marshall Lewis
"The Egg Man" by Sun Singleton
"Malaika Descending" by Sheree Renée Thomas
"Blues for Sister Rose" by Michael A. Gonzales
"Born Again" by t'ai freedom ford
"Knot Frum Hear" by D. Scot Miller
"Friday" by Kenji Jasper
"Love, Rage and Volkswagens" by SékouWrites
"Marine Tiger" by Jerry A. Rodriguez
"Walk Amidst the Broken Beds" by Staceyann Chin
"Broke-Down Princess" by kelly a. abel
"A Debt to Pay" by Carol Taylor
"Love Letter to Haiti" by Natasha Labaze

To find out more check out the blog:
http://bronxbiannual.blogspot.com/

If you want to know something more, ask me.

Talk more later.

Love and Happiness,
Carol