Photo Credit: Vanessa Gualdron
Benjamin Wright
Author of
O/X (Astra House, TBD)
Born into a multiracial family in Oakland, California, Benjamin Wright’s experiences as a perpetual misfit—ethnically ambiguous, the only boy in a family of girls, both the sneering smartass and the sensitive weirdo—have drawn him toward complex, multifaceted narratives of identity and belonging. He went to high school in south Texas before attending the University of Southern California, where he couldn’t choose between studying film and studying creative writing, and so studied both. After four years spent teaching English in a small town in Japan, he moved to New York in 2007. He currently lives in Brooklyn, where he works as a video editor. He loves soul records and the band Sloan, and will happily talk to you about either. Sometimes he thinks he should get a dog. He has a Thomas Pynchon tattoo. If you meet him, please never mention it.
Books BY benjamin
O/X (Astra House, TBD)
A modern American epic about race, music, family and identity, O/X tells the story of X, the bi-racial son of a world-famous musician, and the reluctant steward of his legacy: a vinyl record with hypnotic, perhaps even supernatural qualities. As X navigates life in New York, he must contend with the long shadow cast by his father, and grapple with the death of his twin sister, O—all set against the backdrop of an America in which the Black population has mysteriously vanished.