Direct Download: 20020718-tourewi.mp3

A contributing editor at Rolling Stone, Touré won the Sam Adams Short Story Contest sponsored by Zoetrope magazine. The stories in The Portable Promised Land introduce Soul City, an imagined utopia where magic happens and black is beautiful. Essence magazine says Philly’s own Mat Johnson has written a novel that “…signals the arrival of a talented new fiction writer…adroit at both satire and creating memorable characters.” Drop, which has been favorably compared to the early writings of James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison, offers a wild ride through class-consciousness and self-consciousness.