Author of Everywhere You Don't Belong

Two years ago, with an MFA from UMass and a contract with Algonquin Books, Chicago-born Gabriel Bump moved to Buffalo to begin his career as a writer. On February 4, 2020, publication day for his debut, Everywhere You Don't Belong, Talking Leaves…Books, UB's Exhibit X series, and Hallwalls will co-host a reading and talk in the Cinema at Hallwalls. The event is free and open to the public; book purchase is encouraged as an act of respect and support for the author, the publisher, and the event's sponsors and hosts. This is the inaugural event for the author's national tour to promote the book.

In his alternately witty and heartbreaking debut novel, Gabriel Bump gives us an unforgettable protagonist, Claude McKay Love. Claude isn't dangerous or brilliant—he's an average kid coping with abandonment, violence, riots, failed love, and societal pressures as he steers his way past the signposts of youth: childhood friendships, basketball tryouts, first love, first heartbreak, picking a college, moving away from home.
 
Claude just wants a place where he can fit. As a young black man born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights-era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change; yet when riots consume his neighborhood, he hesitates to take sides, unwilling to let race define his life. He decides to escape Chicago for another place, to go to college, to find a new identity, to leave the pressure cooker of his hometown behind. But as he discovers, he cannot; there is no safe haven for a young black man in this time and place called America.

Percolating with fierceness and originality, attuned to the ironies inherent in our 21st-century landscape, Everywhere You Don't Belong marks the arrival of a brilliant young talent.

"This book is astonishing. You'll be smiling even as your heart is breaking, and you'll tip willingly into this world Bump offers you, because what appears again and again are spectacular beams of light also called love, also called hope, also called family. Gabriel Bump has established himself as a stunning talent to be reckoned with."

~ Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King

"Everywhere You Don't Belong is a literary blues, raw and rowdy and big and brawling, yet smooth and polished and crafty, a novel that a city like Chicago deserves. Gabriel has achieved here that special confluence of the writer, the craft, and the moment that makes art we cannot afford to ignore, especially at this moment."

~ Arthur Flowers, author of Another Good Loving Blues and I See the Promised Land

For more information please contact Jonathon Welch at Talking Leaves, (716) 884-9524, talkingleavesbooks@gmail.com