Achy Obejas

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Achy Obejas is the author of The Tower of the Antilles, which was a PEN/Faulkner finalist, and several other books of fiction. Her first full book of poetry, Boomerang, will be published by Beacon Press in a bilingual edition in 2021. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area and successfully nominated Edwidge Danticat for the 2018 Neustadt Prize.

  • A time elapsed photo of the sky at night, the stars creating arcs of light across the sky

    Slow

    Autumn 2020
    Achy Obejas
    Photo by Paul Gilmore / Unsplash The Clock of the Long Now will operate knowing it will lose the correct time, exposed as it will be to imprecise temperatures, stellar and solar alignments, tectonic…
  • A human figure composed of random objects in a collage

    Recountal

    May 13, 2020 Achy Obejas
    Carlos Estévez, Self-Fishing, 2006, collage on paper, 39½ x 27½ inches / Courtesy of the artist Now the beat (there is always a beat). Now the drums and the darkness within. Now the dance. The s…
  • A photograph of Edwidge Danticat, wearing black offset by a colorful scarf, against an olive background

    Bearing the Unforgivable: A Tribute to Edwidge Danticat

    Winter 2019
    Achy Obejas
    Photo: Shevaun WilliamsThank you to the Neustadt Prize committee, Neustadt sisters and family, the University of Oklahoma, the incredible writers who served with me on the jury last year. It is my gre…
  • A black and white photo of elephants trumpeting at the edge of a water source

    The Land of Regal Elephants

    December 7, 2018 Achy Obejas
    Elephants in Etosha National Park, Namibia / Photo by Richard Jacobs on Unsplash for Reinaldo Arenas I have seen a land of regal elephants, you wrote some years ago, not many really, back wh…
  • The cover to The Tower of the Antilles by Achy Obejas

    The Tower of the Antilles by Achy Obejas

    Achy Obejas
    Brooklyn. Akashic Books. 2017. 158 pages. Achy Obejas’s new book, The Tower of the Antilles, amply fulfills the promise of the author’s earlier work. These stories are about borders—physical…

  • Genesis

    September 2013
    Achy Obejas
    The first time I saw your father,I stared back into the pool at your reflectionwhile he waded through,the water moving in gentle circles away from us. The first time, I thought it was the Nilewe’d dip…