PUBLISHED WORKS
Books are in blue
Direct web links to essays are underlined
2020
Leaders in Literature, Politics and Arts Share Their Favorite Books of 2020
Short piece on books including Busted in New York and Other Essays by Darryl Pinckney
and The Tradition: Poems by Jericho Brown
Wall Street Journal
December 3, 2020
Roots & Reality
Essay on teaching children about America
Commonweal
October 23, 2020
Wonderful Worlds
Short essay on Louis Armstrong’s song “Wonderful World”
Voice Male: The Magazine for Changing Men
Fall 2020
Essay in Symposium on Anxiety
The Threepenny Review
Fall 2020
Quintessence
Short story
Four Way Review
August 15, 2020
George Floyd, Derek Chauvin, and the New Gold Standard
Essay
Scoundrel Time
June 10, 2020
Clifford Thompson with David Winner
Interviewed by the writer David Winner for…
The Brooklyn Rail
June 2020
Rooms and Clarinets
Personal essay on race and the pandemic
StatORec
May 30, 2020 (reprinted in Writing the Virus: Work from StatORec Magazine, Fall 2020)
Homage to Albert Murray
Personal essay/review of Library of America’s 50th anniversary edition of
The Omni-Americans by Albert Murray
The Baffler, April 8, 2020
Long Red Monte Carlo
Personal essay
The Common Reader, March 25, 2020
Humor Is the Dominant Note
Review of James McBride’s novel Deacon King Kong
Los Angeles Review of Books, March 18, 2020
Table Talk Piece
The Threepenny Review, Spring 2020
Fully Human, Every Single One
Review of Ta-Nehisi Coate’s novel The Water Dancer
Times Literary Supplement, February 7, 2020
2019
Staking Out His Territory
Review of The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison
Wall Street Journal, November 30, 2019
Seventeen Notes on Singing
Personal essay, AGNI (online), November 25, 2019
Summer of ’83
Personal essay, AGNI, Number Ninety, Fall 2019
What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues
Other Press
On Unhappiness, Friendship, and Charlie Brown
Essay in The Peanuts Papers: Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the Gang, and the Meaning of Life
Library of America
Essay in Symposium on Desire
The Threepenny Review, Fall 2019
Better Angels
Apple, Tree: Writers on Their Parents
edited by Lise Funderburg
University of Nebraska Press
Pen and Ink
Times Literary Supplement, August 23 & 30, 2019
Agitate! Agitate! Agitate!
review of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow and Henry Louis Gates's Stony the Road
Times Literary Supplement, August 16, 2019
Intellect and Intuition
review of Colson Whitehead's novel The Nickel Boys
Times Literary Supplement, July 26, 2019
Los Angeles Review of Books
Review of William Melvin Kelley’s novel A Different Drummer
Times Literary Supplement, May 10, 2019
“Hearts and Bones”
review of Yuval Taylor’s book Zora and Langston: A Story of Friendship and Betrayal
The Wall Street Journal, April 27, 2019
“Where the Poor Cope, Suffer, and Die in Silence”
review of Alex Kotlowitz’s book An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago
The Washington Post, April 19, 2019
“Raincoats,” “Frozen Over,” “Revolutions Per Minute,” “Love and Golf,” and “The Magic Gap” (poems)
COG magazine, March 1, 2019—Finalist for the COG 2018-19 COG Poetry Award
A Spy in Caanan and Bluff City (review of two books)
The Wall Street Journal, February 23, 2019
Naked City
Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, February 10, 2019
Joan Didion’s Blues
The Threepenny Review, Winter 2019
2018
Dear White People: Stop Using the Term 'Uncle Tom'
(op-ed) The Washington Post, November 16, 2018
Long Tall Tenor Man
Review of Maxine Gordon’s biography Sophisticated Giant: The Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon
The Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2018
Personal essay, The Coal Hill Review
Myths that Shape Our Notion of Identity
Review of Kwame Anthony Appiah's book The Lies That Bind
The Washington Post, August 23, 2018
In the Haze Where Sea Meets Sky
Times Literary Supplement, June 29, 2018
Getting Ahead
Times Literary Supplement, June 8, 2018
Equinox
Speak magazine, June 2018
"Table Talk" Piece
The Threepenny Review, Summer 2018
Review of Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance
The Washington Post, March 2, 2018
The Threepenny Review, Spring 2018
Review of The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke
The Wall Street Journal, January 27, 2018
The Common Reader, January 4, 2018
Read a Book
Times Literary Supplement, January 12, 2018
2017
Aliens and Fences
Review of The Origin of Others, by Toni Morrison
Times Literary Supplement, November 21, 2017
Hollering at the System
Review of Chester Himes' biography
Wall Street Journal, August 26, 2017
Essay in "A Symposium on Neighborhoods"
The Threepenny Review, Fall 2017
Essay on James Baldwin
Los Angeles Review of Books, September 2017
Hunger
Review of Roxane Gay's memoir Hunger
Los Angeles Review of Books, Summer 2017
2014 (Poem)
Clockhouse, 2017
The World, the Moon, the Dream
The Threepenny Review, Spring 2017
Selected for The Best American Essays 2018 edited by Hilton Als
2016
Round Midnight, November 21, 1947 (for Thelonious Monk) (Poem)
Auburn Avenue, Fall 2016
What a Fine Thing It Would Be (Poem)
The Georgia Review, Fall 2016
The Art, Magic, and Blues of Raymond Carver
The Threepenny Review, Fall 2016
Los Angeles Review of Books, August 29, 2016
Watching the World: A Young Black Man’s Memoir Turns the Lens in Two Directions
Review of Mychal Denzel’s book Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching
The Village Voice, August 17, 2016
The Threepenny Review, Spring 2016
Reprinted in the 2017 anthologies Revise the Psalm: Works Inspired by the Writings of Gwendolyn Brooks and The Whiskey of Our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience and Change Agent (forthcoming)
Our Hero and His Blues: Celebrating Albert Murray
Los Angeles Review of Books, May 8, 2016
Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
Review of memoir by Roz Chast
The Common Reader, May 2016
MMA Is Here to Stay and It’s Time for New York to Legalize and Regulate It
The Village Voice, March 22, 2016
Flying Home
Review of short story collection by David Nicholson
The Common Reader, May 2016
I Have a Nightmare
Review of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book Between the World and Me
American Book Review, 2016
2015
You Learn Things When You’re Ready to Learn Them
Kemp Powers Interviews Clifford Thompson
Los Angeles Review of Books
November 15, 2015
“Table Talk” Piece
The Threepenny Review, Fall 2015
Twin of Blackness: A Memoir
Autumn House Press, 2015
King Lear
Review of the autobiography Even This I Get to Experience, by Norman Lear
The Common Reader, March 26, 2015
Los Angeles Review of Books, March 13, 2015
On the Bus (Memoir)
The Threepenny Review, Spring 2015
Listed among Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2015 in The Best American Essays 2016
2014
Personal essay/review of Cosby: His Life and Times, by Mark Whitaker
The Common Reader, December 12, 2014
That ’70s Band
Review of Shining Star by Philip Bailey of Earth, Wind & Fire
The Common Reader, October 1, 2014
District Restoration
Review of Mayor for Life, by Marion Barry
The Common Reader, October 1, 2014
Cities, Bulls, and the Boy at Seventeen
The Threepenny Review, Fall 2014
A Brief Take on Slavery and the Holocaust
Vox Populi, June 2014
On Rivers
The Threepenny Review, Spring 2014
“Django Unchained: The Graphic Novel” (Review)
The Common Reader, January 2014
2013
This Man’s Books (on Tobias Wolff’s writing)
The Threepenny Review, Fall 2013
Long Division
The Crisis, Fall 2013
“Django Unchained” (Film review)
Cineaste, 2013
Essay in symposium on Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!
The Threepenny Review, Spring 2013
Love for Sale and Other Essays
Autumn House Press, 2013
Edward and Charles (on Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus)
The Threepenny Review, Winter 2013
2012
Three Funerals and a Wedding
The Threepenny Review, Winter 2012
2011
Faith and Faithlessness: Alexander Payne’s The Descendants (Review)
The American Shot, December 29, 2011
Evoking the Extremes of Human Experience (on Thelonious Monk’s “Bright Mississippi”)
Oxford American, November 2011
The Threepenny Review, Summer 2011
Translated and reprinted in Danish publication Jazz Special
2010
“Table Talk” Piece
The Threepenny Review, Spring 2010