Brandon Taylor Popular Books
Brandon Taylor Biography & Facts
Brandon Taylor (born June 1, 1989) is an American writer. He holds graduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Iowa and has received several fellowships for his writing. His short stories and essays have been published in many outlets and have received critical acclaim. His debut novel, Real Life, came out in 2020 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2022, Taylor's Filthy Animals won The Story Prize awarded annually to collections of short fiction. Early life and education Taylor was born in Prattville, Alabama, and grew up in a small community outside Montgomery. Part of Taylor's upbringing was spent in a very religious, conservative Baptist setting. Taylor's family is mostly illiterate, and he was often made to read his parents' medical bills and government forms. He taught himself how to read using his brother's textbooks, and grew up reading a combination of romance novels, his aunt's nursing-home manuals, and the Bible. Taylor attended Auburn University at Montgomery for his undergraduate studies, and then joined a graduate biochemistry program, and after leaving in 2016 began a career in creative writing. He earned graduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Iowa, where he was an Iowa Arts Fellow at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Career Taylor's short stories and essays have appeared in Granta, Guernica, American Short Fiction, Gulf Coast, Buzzfeed Reader, O: The Oprah Magazine, Gay, The New Yorker, The Literary Review, and elsewhere. He is the senior editor of Electric Literature's "Recommended Reading" and is a staff writer at Literary Hub. He has also contributed book reviews to The New York Times and 4Columns, having reviewed works by authors such as Sally Rooney, Emma Cline, and Banana Yoshimoto. In an interview for the Booker Prizes, Taylor said his influences were Mavis Gallant, André Aciman, Jane Austen, Alice Munro, Louise Glück, Elizabeth Bishop, Hilton Als, Pat Conroy and Ann Petry. He received a fellowship from the Lambda Literary Foundation in 2017. He has also received fellowships for his writing from Kimbilio Fiction and the Tin House Summer Writer's Workshop. His debut novel, Real Life, was published in 2020 with Riverhead Books. In 2021, a collection of his stories, Filthy Animals, was also published by Riverhead. Taylor's upcoming projects as of 2023 include novels titled Group Show and Other Years, as well as a Southern Gothic project called Kinfolks, the last of which he has found particularly daunting. Real Life Taylor wrote his debut novel, Real Life, in less than five weeks, and he later explained his approach: "I was like, I'm going to sit down and knock this out so I can get on with my life.... Writing a novel ruins your life in really specific ways. Because you have to live inside of it. It's just this sustained exercise in being miserable." It is "a campus novel imagined from the vantage of a character who is usually shunted to the sidelines ... a gay black student from a small town in Alabama". Published in 2020 by Riverhead Books, Real Life received critical acclaim. Describing Taylor's work in the Los Angeles Times, Bethanne Patrick wrote: "His voice might best be described as a controlled roar of rage and pain, its energy held together by the careful thinking of a mind accustomed to good behavior." According to the review of Real Life by Jeremy O. Harris in The New York Times, "It is a curious novel to describe, for much of the plot involves excavating the profound from the mundane. As in the modernist novels of Woolf and Tolstoy cited in passing throughout, the true action of Taylor's novel exists beneath the surface, buried in subterranean spaces." Michael Arceneaux wrote in Time: "Taylor's book isn't about overcoming trauma or the perils of academia or even just the experience of inhabiting a black body in a white space, even as Real Life does cover these subjects. Taylor is also tackling loneliness, desire and — more than anything — finding purpose, meaning and happiness in one's own life... How fortunate we are for Real Life, another stunning contribution from a community long deserving of the chance to tell its stories." Taylor himself has said: "I hope that it's a novel that challenges people to think about the ways that we fit together in our relationships with one another. I hope it makes people think really deeply about both the ways that they are harmed, and that they do harm to others." Taylor's book tour to publicize his novel was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictions on travel and public gatherings. Real Life was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize. The New York Times included the novel on its list of "100 Notable Books of 2020". In 2021, GQ reported that Real Life was being adapted into a movie featuring Kid Cudi. Filthy Animals Taylor's collection of short stories, Filthy Animals, was awarded The Story Prize in 2022. In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Thomas Mar Wee wrote in praise of the book: "Neither cold nor detached, these stories are suffused with a warmth and humanity that recalled for me the uncanniness of Raymond Carver, the empathy of Alice Munro, and the meticulous irony of Chekhov." The Late Americans Taylor's second novel, The Late Americans, was published in 2023. It follows a group of writers in Iowa City, where he lived while getting an MFA at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. While critical responses to the novel were mostly positive, the reception was more mixed compared to his two previous works. Personal life As of 2022, Taylor lives in New York City. He identifies as queer. From 2021 to 2023, Taylor read all 20 novels in Émile Zola's Les Rougon-Macquart cycle after being commissioned to write a piece on the series for the London Review of Books. In the ensuing article, Taylor acknowledged how he deeply identified with the depiction of alcohol dependence portrayed in the novel L'Assommoir, likening it to the behavior he observed in his parents as a child. In the piece, he wrote: The Assommoir is the most accurate, brutal depiction of the reality of alcoholism I have ever read, capturing too the strange, evil joviality that warps all the relationships in such a household. I found the book eerie and painful, and I wept at the end when Gervaise started to show physical symptoms similar to those I saw in my mother and father: the clumsiness, the persistent lack of memory, the tremors at all hours of the day. Bibliography Real Life. Riverhead Books. 2020. ISBN 978-0-525-53888-2. Filthy Animals. Riverhead Books. 2021. ISBN 978-0-525-53892-9. The Late Americans. Riverhead Books. 2023. ISBN 978-0-593-33233-7. Awards 2020: Booker Prize – Shortlisted (Real Life) 2020: Center for Fiction First Novel Prize – Longlisted (Real Life) 2021: Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction – Finalist (Real Life) 2021: Young Lions Fiction Award – Finalist (Real Life) 2021: The Story Prize – Winner (Filthy Animals.... Discover the Brandon Taylor popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Brandon Taylor books.
Best Seller Brandon Taylor Books of 2024
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The Tridoxy
CometanThe Tridoxy comprises of a series of short philosophical discourses forming the third disquisition of the one million word long philosophical treatise known as The Omnidoxy solely ...
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The Millettarian Methodology
CometanThe Millettarian Methodology is a postdisquisitional segment of the Omnidoxy within the Appendix of the Omnidoxy as part of the Original Omnidoxical Series solely written and organ...
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A Remedy In Time
Jennifer MacaireREADERS LOVE JENNIFER MACAIRE! 'Fascinating . . . Jampacked with adventure and colour' Jodi Taylor 'Fantastic historical adventure' AMAZON REVIEWER 'I highly recommend it' GOODRE...
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Omnidoxical Register
CometanThe Omnidoxical Register is a postdisquisitional segment of the Omnidoxy within the Appendix of the Omnidoxy as part of the Original Omnidoxical Series. It provides an extensive li...
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The Hexadoxy
CometanThe Hexadoxy is a major philosophical disquisition comprised of a series of discourses primarily focused on the Astronistapproach to the philosophy of being (or ontology)...
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The Septidoxy
CometanThe Septidoxy is the seventh disquisition contributing to the total of twelve which form The Omnidoxy, the philosophical treatise which founded the philosophy of Ast...
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The Institutional Dictionary of Freedom of Religion or Belief
CometanThis Dictionary of Freedom of Religion or Belief is published by the Astronist Institution through its imprint press Astral Publishing and will stand as the third entry in the Inst...
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Omnidoxical Encyclopaedia of Astronism
CometanThe Omnidoxical Encyclopaedia of Astronism is a postdisquisitional segment of the Omnidoxy within the Appendix of the Omnidoxy as part of the Original Omnidoxical Series solely wri...
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A Good Bad Boy
Margaret WapplerAn artful and contemplative tribute to the late actor famed for his role as Dylan McKay in Beverly Hills, 90210.Best known for playing loner rebel Dylan McKay in Beverly Hills 9021...
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The Institutional Dictionary of Astronism
CometanThe Institutional Dictionary of Astronism is the cumulation of receptions between Cometan and the astronomical world during the Founding era (20132021). The publication of this ver...
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Appendix of the Omnidoxy
CometanThe Appendix of the Omnidoxy is the postdisquisitional segment of the Omnidoxy making up 460,000 words and principally includes The Grand Lexicon of Astronology, the Omnidoxical En...
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How We Named the Stars
Andrés N. OrdoricaA Best Book of January at The Washington Post, Kirkus Reviews, and Alta Journal"A touching story about a transformative queer romance."The New York Time Books ReviewNamed One of th...
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Brandon Taylor and the Rise of the Warmonger
Sylvester RichardsThis is a science fiction action adventure story set 200 years in the future where Europe is totally unified and ruled with an iron fist by a mysterious figure who cannot be killed...
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The Duodoxy
CometanThe Duodoxy is a 400,000 word long philosophical disquisition and the second of twelve disquisitions forming The Omnidoxysolely authored by the mononymous philosopher and...
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Real Life
Brandon TaylorA FINALIST for the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the VCU/Cabell First Novelist Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, the NYPL Y...
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Kink
R.O. Kwon & Garth GreenwellA New York Times Notable Book Kink is a groundbreaking anthology of literary short fiction exploring love and desire, BDSM, and interests across the sexual spectrum, edited by laud...
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The Octadoxy
CometanThe Octadoxy is the eighth disquisition of twelve which form the philosophical treatise known as The Omnidoxy with its discourses primarily concerned with the formation of the...
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Cometanic Quotes
CometanCometanic Quotes is a postdisquisitional segment of the Omnidoxy within the Appendix of the Omnidoxy as part of the Original Omnidoxical Series solely written and organised by Come...
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The Late Americans
Brandon TaylorINSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLERNAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR BY VOGUE, ELLE, OPRAH DAILY, THE WASHINGTON POST, BUZZFEED AND VULTURE “Erudite, intimate, hilarious, poignant ...
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Halb so schlimm
Roxane GayHalb so schlimm darf nicht mehr gut genug sein! 29 Essays und Geschichten über Vergewaltigung und sexuelle Belästigung tief persönlich und schonungslos ehrlich.»Alles daran war s...
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The Omnidoxy
CometanThe Omnidoxy, solely authored by the philosopher Cometan, is the founding treatise totalling over one million words in length forming the conceptual, orientational, and struct...
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The Nonodoxy
CometanThe Nonodoxy is a philosophical disquisition comprised of fiftynine discourses studying the topics of knowledge (epistemology) and morality (ethics). The Nonodoxy is organised...
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The Tetradoxy
CometanThe Tetradoxy is a short philosophical disquisition and the fourth disquisition of The Omnidoxy by Cometan and consists of a series of discourses that are ...
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Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes
Henry Van Dyke & Erik WoodA lost midcentury classicthe farcical misadventures of a queer Black teen sharing a house with two adoptive mothers, a lascivious cook, and a reticent ghost.In a small Michigan tow...
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Jesse Millette and the Missing Man of Loch Ness
CometanWhen Jesse Millette heard that one of his father's friends had disappeared in the Scottish Highlands while searching for the Loch Ness Monster, he knew the time had come again to p...
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Tokens of Love
Brandon Taylor & Sheretta TaylorHave you ever wondered if God has an interest in your love life? Do you sometimes question if His plan for romance really works? What if you could find these answers intricately wo...
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Glossary of the Omnidoxy
CometanThe Glossary of the Omnidoxy is a postdisquisitional segment of the Omnidoxy within the Appendix of the Omnidoxy as part of the Original Omnidoxical Series that was solely authored...
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The Hendecadoxy
CometanThe Hendecadoxy is a short philosophical disquisition fulfilling the eleventh of twelve disquisition which culminate as one to form The Omnidoxy. The Hendecadoxy is prima...
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The Decadoxy
CometanThe Decadoxy is an Astronicphilosophical disquisition forming the tenth disquisition of twelve which comprise The Omnidoxy, the founding treatise of the philosophy o...
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Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style
Paul Rudnick“A case study in elegant, honest tragicomedy…by the genuinely hilarious Paul Rudnick” (Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author) that follows the decadeslong, rulebreakin...
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Everyday People
Jennifer Baker“A delight and highly recommended.” Booklist “Showcases the truth and fullness of people of color.” Book Riot In the tradition of Best American Short Stories comes Everyday People:...
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The Language of Love and Loss
Bart YatesReaders of Mad Honey will adore this clever, deeply touching, buoyant new novel from an awardwinning author. When his difficult mother is diagnosed with ALS, a sharpwitted yet sens...
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The Monodoxy
CometanThe Monodoxy is a 275,000 wordlong philosophical disquisition comprising of hundreds of discourses which are themselves titled by rubrals and written according to a style and struc...
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The Pentadoxy
CometanThe Pentadoxy is a 45,000 word long philosophical disquisition that is organised as the fifth instalment of twelve disquisitions forming The Omnidoxy. The Omnidoxy is a p...
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The Dodecadoxy
CometanThe Dodecadoxy, also known as The Ultimation, is the twelfth and final disquisition of the philosophical treatise known as The Omnidoxy, the founding text of the philosop...
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The Grand Lexicon of Astronology
CometanThe Grand Lexicon of Astronology is the principal postdisquisitional segment of the Omnidoxy within the Appendix of the Omnidoxy as part of the Original Omnidoxical Series solely a...