Author Guide · Memoir, Essays & Fiction
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In July 2012 the website Gawker published an essay by Kiese Laymon, then teaching at Vassar, called “How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America”. It went back to Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, which had suspended him for a year after he took a library book without checking it out, at a time when the administration objected to what he wrote about race in the student paper. A major publisher had already bought his first novel, but an editor told him its racial politics were “too explicit”. He walked away, and in 2013 the small press Agate published the novel and an essay collection named after the Gawker piece. Five years later Heavy, a memoir written to his mother, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal. This guide covers his 4 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 4 key books · 2013–2025 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Kiese Laymon has published four books: the novel Long Division (2013, revised 2021), the essays How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America (2013, revised 2020), Heavy: An American Memoir (2018) and the picture book City Summer, Country Summer (2025). Start with Heavy. Below: what each book is about, why the first two exist in two versions, and what is coming next.
Where to Start with Kiese Laymon
If you want his defining book
→ Heavy (2018) — the memoir written to his mother.
If you want fiction
→ Long Division (2013) — time travel, Hurricane Katrina and a missing girl in Mississippi.
If you want short essays
→ How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America (2013) — the revised 2020 edition.
If you are reading with children
→ City Summer, Country Summer (2025).
4 Kiese Laymon Books, in Order
Long Division
In 2013, fourteen-year-old Citoyen “City” Coldson becomes a YouTube sensation after melting down on stage at a televised quiz contest and is sent to his grandmother in Melahatchie, Mississippi, where a girl named Baize Shephard has disappeared. He is given a book, also called Long Division, about another City Coldson in 1985 who travels in time with his friend Shalaya Crump, as far back as 1964 and a family threatened by the Ku Klux Klan. Agate published it in June 2013; Scribner reissued a revised edition in June 2021, in which Laymon reworked language he considered ableist. The 2021 edition won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in fiction.
How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America
Essays on family, race, violence, music, writing and growing up in Mississippi, built around the title essay first published on Gawker in 2012. “Hip Hop Stole My Southern Black Boy” argues that New York and California rap crowded out the Southern stories he wanted to tell. Agate published the first edition in August 2013. The revised Scribner edition of November 2020 has thirteen essays, seven from 2013 and six new, among them an interview with his mother and pieces on Ole Miss football and OutKast; The New York Times listed it as a notable book.
Heavy
Written in the second person to his mother, a political scientist and single parent in Jackson who pushed him to excel and beat him, the book follows his body through childhood and college: weight gained and then lost to the point of starving, a gambling habit they shared, and racism in Mississippi. It won the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, whose 5,000 dollar prize he gave to young people in Mississippi, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize’s Christopher Isherwood Prize, and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. In 2024 The New York Times placed it at No. 60 on its list of the 100 best books of the 21st century.
City Summer, Country Summer
A 32-page picture book, illustrated by Alexis Franklin and published by Kokila in April 2025. Three Black boys, one of them from New York, spend a summer with their grandmothers in rural Mississippi, playing Marco Polo in the garden and sledding down a slope on cardboard. It grew out of a 2020 New York Times photo essay by Laymon with photographs by Andre Wagner, and out of his own summers at his grandmother’s house.
In What Order to Read Kiese Laymon
The books do not depend on one another, but they share people and places: his mother, his grandmother, Jackson and the small towns around it. Reading Heavy first gives you the life the essays and the novel keep returning to.
For the two 2013 books, look for the revised Scribner editions (2020 and 2021). Laymon bought back the rights in order to rewrite them, and the revised editions are the ones now in print. City Summer, Country Summer is for young children and can be read at any point.
A reading path
1. Heavy (2018)
2. How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America (2013; revised 2020)
3. Long Division (2013; revised 2021)
4. City Summer, Country Summer (2025)
What Comes Next
Beyond the 4 key books: 1 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Forthcoming
1
1 book · 2027
- 2027Good, God: A Creation Storya memoir, announced by Scribner for April 2027, about his grandmother and about trying to have a child with a close friend
The years · 1974–2025
Quick facts about Kiese Laymon
- Known for
- Writing about Black Southern life, the body and his family with unusual directness, above all in Heavy, a memoir addressed to his mother.
- 1974
- Born in Jackson, Mississippi
- 1998
- Graduates from Oberlin College
- 2018
- Heavy
- 2025
- First picture book
- Born
- 15 August 1974, Jackson, Mississippi; his mother was a political science professor at Jackson State University
- Education
- Millsaps College and Jackson State; BA, Oberlin College (1998); MFA, Indiana University
- Taught
- Vassar College; the University of Mississippi; Rice University since January 2022, as Libbie Shearn Moody Professor of Creative Writing and English
- Honours
- Andrew Carnegie Medal (2019); MacArthur Fellowship (2022); NAACP Image Award (2022)
- Founded
- The Catherine Coleman Literary Arts and Justice Initiative in Mississippi, which encourages young people and their parents to read, write and share their stories
- Status
- Living; a new memoir is announced for 2027
The red mark is 2018: Heavy, the memoir that won the Andrew Carnegie Medal.
How Kiese Laymon Writes: Telling It to Someone
Laymon usually writes to a person rather than about one. Heavy is addressed throughout to “you”, his mother, and opens by admitting the temptation it refuses: “I did not want to write to you. I wanted to write a lie.” The direct address puts the reader in the position of overhearing a son say what families usually leave unsaid, about beatings, food, money and the body.
Revision is his central subject as well as his method. In Heavy he writes that “revised word patterns were revised thought patterns”. He has practised it on his own published work: he paid to recover the rights to his first two books, rewrote language in Long Division, and replaced five of the original essays in How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America with newer ones.
The South is not a backdrop but the argument. His essays insist on Mississippi’s own voices against the New York and Los Angeles versions of Black life, and Long Division uses time travel to connect 1964, 1985 and the years after Hurricane Katrina in one small coastal town. Even his picture book is set at a grandmother’s house in rural Mississippi.
Watch
Kiese Laymon on Heavy
At Politics and Prose, the independent bookshop in Washington, D.C., Laymon reads from and talks about Heavy, his memoir written to his mother.
Frequently asked questions about Kiese Laymon’s books
How many books has Kiese Laymon written?
Four: Long Division (2013), How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America (2013), Heavy: An American Memoir (2018) and the picture book City Summer, Country Summer (2025). The first two also exist in revised editions (2021 and 2020), which are the same books rewritten rather than new ones. A fifth, the memoir Good, God: A Creation Story, is announced for April 2027.
What are Kiese Laymon’s books in order?
Long Division (June 2013), How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America (August 2013), Heavy: An American Memoir (2018) and City Summer, Country Summer (2025). The revised editions of the essays and the novel followed in 2020 and 2021.
Where should I start with Kiese Laymon?
With Heavy. It tells the story behind everything else he has written, and it is his most widely read book. If you prefer fiction, start with the 2021 edition of Long Division.
What is Kiese Laymon’s most famous book?
Heavy: An American Memoir (2018). It won the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, and in 2024 The New York Times ranked it No. 60 among the 100 best books of the 21st century.
Why are there two editions of Long Division and How to Slowly Kill Yourself?
Both were first published in 2013 by Agate, a small press, after a major publisher’s editor had asked him to tone down the racial politics of the novel. Laymon has said that Agate paid 1,000 dollars for the essays and 3,000 dollars for the novel, and refused when he later asked to revise them; he says he bought the rights back for 50,000 dollars, after a first asking price of about 300,000. Scribner then published revised editions: the essays in November 2020 (six new essays, five old ones dropped) and the novel in June 2021. These figures are Laymon’s account; Agate has not published its side.
What is Heavy about?
Laymon’s childhood and young adulthood in Jackson, Mississippi, written as a letter to his mother: her ambition for him and her violence, his weight and how he starved it off, the gambling they shared, his suspension from Millsaps College, and the racism around all of it. His grandmother is the book’s steady presence.
What awards has Kiese Laymon won?
For Heavy, the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose (Los Angeles Times Book Prizes) and the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for nonfiction. The 2021 edition of Long Division won the 2022 NAACP Image Award for fiction. In 2022 he was named a MacArthur Fellow.
Has Kiese Laymon written a children’s book?
Yes. City Summer, Country Summer (Kokila, 2025), illustrated by Alexis Franklin, follows three Black boys spending a summer with their grandmothers in rural Mississippi. It began as a 2020 photo essay for The New York Times.
Is Kiese Laymon still alive?
Yes. He was born on 15 August 1974 in Jackson, Mississippi, and teaches creative writing at Rice University in Houston, where he has been since January 2022.
Does Kiese Laymon have a new book coming out?
Yes. Scribner has announced Good, God: A Creation Story, a memoir, for 6 April 2027. It is about the women in three generations of his life, from his grandmother to the daughter he hopes to have with a close friend.
Footnotes
- Kiese Laymon — Wikipedia
- Kiese Laymon’s overdue success proves publishers can change — NPR Code Switch, 2013
- Kiese Laymon’s commitment to Mississippi writers is a forever thing — Reckon, 2021
- Rice’s Kiese Laymon awarded MacArthur Fellowship — Rice News, 2022
- Kiese Laymon wins Andrew Carnegie Medal — Mississippi Today, 2019
- SLJ talks to Kiese Laymon about City Summer, Country Summer — School Library Journal, 2025
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“I did not want to write to you. I wanted to write a lie.”
— Kiese Laymon, Heavy: An American Memoir (2018), the opening lines
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