Fiction. LGBT Studies. African American Studies. In NEWCOMER CAN'T SWIM, Renee Gladman invites us to accompany her protagonists on their treks into, through and across variegated, mysterious soulspaces and dreamscapes, troubling the surfaces and boundaries of story and genre. Her figures touch down, chapter by chapter, onto beaches, city streets, and unmarked territories, in which echoes, shadows, and parallel presences delineate borders of the cannily strange. As the narrative flickers before us, gathering into an enthralling flow, we find ourselves recording with unmeasured exhilaration that Gladman once again is mapping one of the most original and vital courses in contemporary literature.

Author City: BOSTON, MA USA

Renee Gladman was born in Atlanta in 1971. She received a B.A. in philosophy from Vassar College, and a Master's degree in poetics from New College of California. She is the author of six works of prose—including THE RAVICKIANS (Dorothy, a publishing project, 2011), EVENT FACTORY (Dorothy, a publishing project, 2010), NEWCOMER CAN'T SWIM (Kelsey Street Press, 2007), THE ACTIVIST (Krupskaya, 2003), and JUICE (Kelsey Street Press, 2000)—and one collection of poetry, A PICTURE-FEELING (Roof Books, 2005). Since 2005, she has operated Leon Works, an independent press for experimental prose and other thought-projects based in the sentence, making occasional forays into poetry. She teaches in the Literary Arts Department at Brown University.

Reviews and Other Links
http://booksofpoetry.blogspot.com/2009/10/10-never-get-up-and-if-you-do-never-say.html
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6561297.html
Olivia Cronk at Bookslut
http://xantippemag.net/reviews_6.html