-AWARD-WINNING DEBUT AUTHOR-
Autumn Burton
Mirrors
Mirrors is a collection of short stories and creative nonfiction with settings that are not connected by location, but by the struggles against systemic oppression that tend to be dissociated from mainstream media: child prostitution, drug trafficking, environmental racism, and more. You will be taken on a journey around the globe from Baltimore, one of the birthplaces of American society, to the developing. Through it all, you will discover that you have not traveled to far and that the question remains the same: what does it truly mean to be free?
Using the death of Freddie Gray and the uprisings that followed as her starting point, Autumn Burton uses Mirrors to reflect a fragile globe of pain and injustice. Veering between history, richly-imagined fiction, and strong observations, Burton echoes the best qualities of several giants of writing: the empathy of Frantz Fanon, the history-sweeping moral clarity of Teju Cole, and the righteousness of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michelle Alexander. Burton represents the impassioned voice of an unsatisfied, often horrified, and ultimately hopeful generation.
Micheal Anft, Johns Hopkins Magazine
In this strong first collection, Autumn Burton keeps pace among the best of contemporary nonfiction writers. The prose is engaging, grounded in what Burton knows—about Baltimore, for example, about race and racism and activism—and so the title, Mirrors, rings true. But these essays are driven also by an intellectual honesty and a healthy curiosity that apparently will be satisfied only by a thorough research. Burton’s readers are the beneficiaries: they receive a well-documented distillation of what she has learned. Just as important, they also receive the encouragement to go forward themselves, to attend to those other voices, to learn from them, and to give thanks.
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Madeline Mysko, Author of Bringing Vincent Home and Stone Harbor Bound
