I'll Give You a Reason: Stories

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About the book:

The vibrant stories in I'll Give You a Reason explore race, identity, connection, and belonging in the Ironbound, an immigrant neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey. A young widow goes on her first date since her husband's death and finds herself hunting a bear in the woods with a near stranger. An unhappy wife compares her mother's love spells and rituals to her own efforts to repair her strained marriage. A self-conscious college student discovers a porn star who shares her name and becomes obsessed with her doppelgänger's freedom and comfort with her own body.

Annell López's indelible characters tread the waters of political unrest, sexuality, religion, body image, Blackness, colorism, and gentrification--searching for their identities and a sliver of joy and intimacy. Through each story, a nuanced portrait of the "American Dream" emerges, uplifting the voices of those on its margins.

About the author:

Annell López is a Dominican immigrant. She is the winner of the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize and the author of the short story collection I’LL GIVE YOU A REASON from the Feminist Press. A Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops, her work has also received support from Tin House and has appeared in Guernica, American Short Fiction, Michigan Quarterly Review, Brooklyn Rail, Refinery29 and elsewhere. López received her MFA from the University of New Orleans. She is working on a novel.

About the host:

Jamila Minnicks’ novel Moonrise Over New Jessup (Algonquin Books, 2023), won the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, was a finalist for the 2023 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and was longlisted the 2023 Crook’s Corner Book Prize. Her short stories and essays are published, or forthcoming, in Ploughshares, The Sun, CRAFT, Catapult, Blackbird, The Write Launch, and elsewhere. Jamila’s work has been supported by the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Jamila is a graduate of the University of Michigan, the Howard University School of Law, and the Georgetown University Law Center. She lives in Washington, DC.