Derrick Austin

Interweaving the sacred and the erotic, This Elegance engages with visual arts through the concept of sacra conversazione ("sacred conversation"), a style of Renaissance painting that imagines divine communion across time and space. Here, artists, thinkers, and pop icons commune in a similar sacred dialogue—Kathleen Collins, Andre Leon Talley, Richmond Barthe, Lyle Ashton Harris, Juan de Pareja, Janelle Monáe, Symone,...

Interweaving the sacred and the erotic, This Elegance engages with visual arts through the concept of sacra conversazione ("sacred conversation"), a style of Renaissance painting that imagines divine communion across time and space. Here, artists, thinkers, and pop icons commune in a similar sacred dialogue—Kathleen Collins, Andre Leon Talley, Richmond Barthe, Lyle Ashton Harris, Juan de Pareja, Janelle Monáe, Symone,...

In a country where violence and the threat of violence is a constant weather for queer Black people, where can the spirit rest? With lush language, the meditative poems in the Isabella Gardner Award-winning Tenderness examine the fraught nature of intimacy in a nation poisoned by anti-Blackness and homophobia. From the bedroom to the dance floor, from the natural world...