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Darryl Pinckney

ダリル・ピンクニー

Darryl Pinckney

Profile

Gender
Male
Born
Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.
Nationality
American
Languages
English
Residence History
Indianapolis, Indiana → New York City → Oxfordshire, England

Career

Occupations
novelist, playwright, essayist, critic
Active Years
1980-
Influenced By
Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Wilson

Education

Columbia University
Columbia College
Degree: BA
Year of Graduation: 1988
Country: United States

Awards

Whiting Award
1986
Organization: The Whiting Foundation
Result: winner
Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
1992
Work: High Cotton
Organization: Los Angeles Times
Result: winner
Vursell Award for Distinguished Prose
1994
Organization: American Academy of Arts and Letters
Result: winner
National Book Critics Circle Award for Memoir and Autobiography
2023
Work: Come Back in September
Organization: National Book Critics Circle
Result: finalist
James Tait Black Prize for Biography
2023
Work: Come Back in September
Organization: University of Edinburgh (James Tait Black Prize)
Result: winner

Awards & Nominations

Works

Major Works

High Cotton

1992 Novel (semi-autobiographical)

A semi-autobiographical novel about growing up black and bourgeois in 1960s America.

raceclasscoming-of-age

Black Deutschland

2016 Novel

A novel about a young gay black man in late-1980s Berlin, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

sexualityraceexile

Busted in New York and Other Essays

2019 Essay collection

A collection of essays addressing African-American literature, politics, and cultural issues.

literary criticismrace and politicscultural commentary

Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-seventh Street, Manhattan

2022 Memoir / Literary memoir

A memoir recounting Pinckney's early life in New York literary circles and his decades-long friendship with Elizabeth Hardwick.

memoryliterary educationrelationships

Bibliography

  • High Cotton
  • Sold and Gone: African American Literature and U.S. Society
  • Out There: Mavericks of Black Literature
  • Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy
  • Black Deutschland
  • Busted in New York and Other Essays
  • Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-seventh Street, Manhattan

Style & Themes

Literary Style
combines sharp critical essaying with personal memoirrefined, essayistic prose
Recurring Motifs
race and identityclasssexualitymemory and reminiscence

Legacy

Darryl Pinckney is a writer known for his literary criticism and essays, offering insight into African-American literature and cultural issues. Through novels, plays, and essays he has examined race, class, and sexuality, influencing contemporary literary discourse.

Quotes

  • "Like being at a particularly fabulous literary party... But the real star of the show – the book's constant and slightly terrifying presence – is the critic and novelist Elizabeth Hardwick, Pinckney’s friend of more than three decades and the key that first turned the lock on his exciting New York life."
    Source: The Observer (Rachel Cooke interview, 2022) (2022)

Trivia

  • Partner is English poet James Fenton; the couple have been together since 1989.
  • Early professional work included theatre texts in collaboration with director Robert Wilson.
  • Alumnus of Columbia University (Columbia College).