Doug Jones launches "The Fantasies of Future Things"

Author Doug Jones will be joined by writer David Santos Donaldson for a reading, conversation, signing, and reception.

here!

Daily interactions between Jacob and Daniel are a powder keg of sexual tension and uncertainty. A recent Morehouse graduate and Brooklyn transplant, Jacob fears that accepting the truth of his sexuality will disappoint the hopes his parents have for him to lead a respectable life. Grieving the death of his mother while searching for answers about a father he has never known, Daniel, an Atlanta native, has resigned himself to the reality that men who love men don’t have happy endings.

When Jacob meets Sherman, a social worker fighting for one of the families being displaced by the project, he must decide if rejecting security is worth the risk of embracing the unknown. In the midst of navigating his grief, and volatile relationship with Jacob, Daniel learns of his father’s identity. Though meeting his father could provide Daniel with the closure he has always sought, the distance between what Daniel wants and what he’s willing to do for it remains a question only he can answer.

Advance Praise for The Fantasies of Future Things

"This novel returned me to so many feelings about gay life of the recent past, a now vanished world, full of tension, sublimation, desire, confusion, joy. I cannot put it more clearly than this: Doug Jones is a masterful chronicler of the striving city and the restless heart." —Justin Torres, National Book Award-winning author of Blackouts

"A clear-eyed and page turning meditation on love, family, and what it means to truly own who you are." —Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award-winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming

"A rare and powerful work that reshapes the canon and expands our collective imagination. Jones knows Black queer characters deserve to take up boundless space on the page and in our imaginations. I am changed after reading his debut, and I know you will be too." —Darnell Moore, Lambda Literary Award-winning author of No Ashes in the Fire

“Gorgeously compassionate, this debut is as sharp as our past—and bright as our future.” —Tayari Jones, New York Times Bestselling author of An American Marriage

Doug Jones was born in Brooklyn, NY. An alumnus of Morehouse College, he received his MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. His work has been included in the anthologies Black Love Letters (Zando Projects / Get Lifted Books), Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature & Art (Third World Press) and Sojourner: Black Gay Voices in the Age of AIDS (Other Countries Press). He has also written for Black Issues Book Review and Venus Magazine. An inaugural fellow of the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices, the Hurston/Wright Foundation recognized Doug’s early work. An avid art collector who enjoys swimming and traveling, Doug is a proud pet Dad to a lovable mixed bred German Shepherd, Baldwin. Doug lives in Atlanta, GA. The Fantasies of Future Things is his debut novel.

David Santos Donaldson is the author of the novel GREENLAND, a finalist for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the 2023 Publishing Triangle Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, Germany’s Hot List 2023 Literary Prize, and a 2022 Indies Introduce Pick. His plays have been commissioned by the Public Theater and he was a finalist for the Urban Stages Emerging Playwright Award. He is also currently a practicing psychotherapist and divides his time between Brooklyn, New York, and Seville, Spain. Donaldson’s writing has appeared in various magazines including Poets & Writers, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Shelf Awareness, The Rumpus, and the German literary magazine Geistesblüten.

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