"Randall Kenan" (March 12,1963)

Is an American author of fiction and non-fiction.Raised in a rural community in North Carolina,Randall has focused his fiction on what it means to be African-American and gay in the southern United States.Among his books is the collection of short stories Let the Dead Bury their Dead,which was named a New York Times notable book in 1992.Randall is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship,a Whiting Writers Award and the John Dos Passos Prize.
He was born in Brooklyn,New York.Initially raised by his grandparents,Randall  soon went to live with a great-aunt in Chinquapin,North Carolina,a rural community of fewer than a thousand people.The community later became the basic of the fictional Times Creek,where all of his fiction is set.Randall  attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,from which he graduated in 1985 with degrees in English and creative writing.He studied with the author of Doris Betts.Based on an instructor's recommendation,and the help of novelists and editor Toni Morrison,he was hired for a job with Random House in New York City.
He eventually transferred to the editorial of Alfred A.Knopf,where he worked until 1989.That same year he began teaching writing at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University.Currently,an associate Professor of English at the University of North Carolina,Chapel Hill,he has served as a visiting writer or writing in residence at a number of other universities,including the University of Mississippi,the University of Memphis,Duke University and the University of Nebraska Lincoln.Randall's first novel,A Visitation of Spirits,was published in 1989.While a few critics praised the book,it did not receive much attention.This changed with the publication in 1992 of Randall's second book,a collection of short stories titled Let the Dead Bury their Dead.The stories,based in the fictional community of Tims Creek,focused on (among other things) what it meant to be poor,African American,and gay in the southern United States.The book was was hailed as a revival of classic southern literature and was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for fiction,was a finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award,and was named a New York Times Notable Book.The short story collection also brought renewed attention to his first novel,which was likewise set in Tims Creek.In 1993,Randall published a young adult biography of gay African American novelists and essayist James Baldwin.Randall has frequently stated that James is one of his idols.He then spent several years traveling across American and Canada collecting oral stories of African Americans,which he published in Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty first century (1999).Randall has won a number of writing awards,including a Guggenheim Fellowship,a Whiting Writers Award,the Sherwood Anderson Award,the John Dos Passos Award,and the Roman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.In 2007 Randall The Fire This Time,a book whose title was taken from James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time.His latest book,"only the Dead Know Chapel Hill" tells the tale of an adduction of African American boys from Chapel Hill.This story is filled with walking contradiction,for example:Jesus become Beelzebud but is repeatedly referenced by both of his names.