He edited and wrote the introduction for The Cross of Redemption: The Uncollected Writings of James Baldwin. Kenan was the author of a novel, A Visitation of Spirits two works of non-fiction, Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century and The Fire This Time and two collection of stories, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead and the recently released If I Had Two Wings.
In a 1998 interview with Callaloo Magazine, Kenan offered his own take on the universality of writing about longing, adversity, and connection: With a heightened lyricism and a nod to the fantastical, Kenan centered characters who often struggled against the thicket of their personal wants and histories. Brooklyn born and North Carolina raised, he was a writer who explored how desire, community, and generational trauma can both uplift and warp the black gay rural experience. Randall Kenan’s contribution to the canon of contemporary gay literature is unparalleled. The cause of death has not been released.
Writer and Teacher Randall Kenan, 57, has Diedīeloved writer, teacher, and former Lambda Literary Emerging LGBTQ Voices faculty member Randall Kenan died this week in his home in Chapel Hill.
