Jamel Brinkley is the author of A Lucky Man: Stories (Graywolf Press, 2018), a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. His fiction has been anthologized twice in The Best American Short Stories and has been awarded an O. Henry Prize. Raised in Brooklyn and the Bronx, NY, he teaches at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. A new short story collection, Witness, is forthcoming (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023).