Lot: Stories /// Bryan Washington

One of Barack Obama’s “Favorite Books of the Year” 

“Phenomenal” –Justin Torres, author of We the Animals
“Brilliant” –Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Here Comes the Sun
“A profound exploration of the true meaning of borders.” —The New York Times Book Review

NAMED ONE OF THE 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2019 in the New York Times by Dwight Garner
A New York Times Notable Book of 2019

In the city of Houston – a sprawling, diverse microcosm of America – the son of a black mother and a Latino father is coming of age. He’s working at his family’s restaurant, weathering his brother’s blows, resenting his older sister’s absence. And discovering he likes boys.

Around him, others live and thrive and die in Houston’s myriad neighborhoods: a young woman whose affair detonates across an apartment complex, a ragtag baseball team, a group of young hustlers, hurricane survivors, a local drug dealer who takes a Guatemalan teen under his wing, a reluctant chupacabra.

Bryan Washington’s brilliant, viscerally drawn world vibrates with energy, wit, raw power, and the infinite longing of people searching for home. With soulful insight into what makes a community, a family, and a life, Lot explores trust and love in all its unsparing and unsteady forms.

BIO

Bryan Washington is a National Book Award 5 Under 35 honoree and winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. He received the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award for his first book, Lot, which was also a finalist for the NBCC’s John Leonard Prize, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. He has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, BuzzFeed, Bon Appétit, and GQ, among other publications. He lives in Houston.

REVIEWS

“Washington’s subtle, dynamic and flexible stories play out across [Houston’s] sprawling and multiethnic neighborhoods… An alert and often comic observer of the world… Washington cracks open a vibrant, polyglot side of Houston about which few outsiders are aware… [T]here is a fair amount of joy in Washington’s stories… An underthrob of emotion beats inside them. He’s confident enough not to force the action. The stories feel loose, their cellular juices free to flow.” -- Dwight Garner, New York Times

“This is a story collection that feels like a novel—not because the characters return throughout the book, but because Washington’s astute world-building creates an ever widening scope of Houston that imprints itself on the mind and the psyche. He has such an incredible skill at texturizing people and their histories through each story that the two elements feel consequential to each other. It’s a treat and an inspiration to witness.” -- Ocean Vuong, GQ

“[S]tunning… Lot paints an unforgettable picture of Houston and the people who call it home…. It’s hard to overstate what an accomplishment Lot is…. Washington does a brilliant job making the city come to life in all its imperfect glory. His book is an instant classic of Texas literature, but it’s more than that — it’s a stunning work of art from a young writer with immense talent and a rare sense of compassion, and one of the strongest literary debuts in several years.”  -- NPR

“[F]unny, sad, wise & very alive in the best way.” -- Curtis Sittenfeld (Twitter)

“Audacious… A profound exploration of the true meaning of borders, written very much for and about our current cultural moment….Washington is a one-man border-eradicating crew…. There’s a knowing grin of local familiarity here, yet Washington also manages to present this melancholy, jolly story in the voice of a collective ‘we’ that renders the collection universal.” -- Luis Alberto Urrea, The New York Times Book Review

[P]  Riverhead Books  /  March 17, 2020

0.7" H x 7.9" L x 5.1" W (0.4 lbs) 240 pages