Zinzi Clemmons

Zinzi Clemmons is the author of Freedom: Essays (Viking 2026) and What We Lose (Viking 2017). What We Lose was named “Debut Novel of the Year” by Vogue, and received praise from the Atlantic, the Guardian, the New York Times, The New Yorker; was a finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, the California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Leonard Prize. She is a 2017 National Book Award 5 Under 35 Honoree. A cofounder of the literary magazine Apogee, her work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Believer, the Paris Review Daily, the Los Angeles Times, and the Baffler. She wrote the foreword to a new edition of Jean Toomer’s Cane, published by Penguin Classics in 2019.