“A significant new voice in fiction, Norris has written what may be one of the defining novels of the era at the intersection between Black Lives Matter and COVID-19.”—BUZZFEED BOOKS

Keenan Norris is a novelist, essayist and scholar. His latest novel is The Confession of Copeland Cane, the winner of the 2022 Northern California Book Award. His essays have garnered the 2021-22 National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award in Music, Theater and Performing Arts and the 2021 Folio: Eddie Award. His other books include the non-fiction work Chi Boy: Native Sons and Chicago Reckonings and his debut novel Brother and the Dancer, which received the James D. Houston Award in 2012.

Keenan has served as Lannan Visiting Writer at the Institute of American Indian Arts and Rea Visiting Writer at the University of Virginia. He is coordinator of the Steinbeck Fellows Program at San Jose State University.

His feature pieces and articles have appeared in numerous forums, including the Los Angeles Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, TED-ED, Stranger’s Guide and Alta, while his short fiction has been published in several anthologies of California literature. He is an Associate Professor at San Jose State University.

“KEENAN NORRIS announces himself as a voice for a generation living through an age of normalized absurdity. Norris’s voice is necessary and vital—and a call to take heed.”

—MICHAEL DATCHER, AUTHOR OF ANIMATING BLACK AND BROWN LIBERATION: A THEORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURES