Andre Perry reading from his new book

Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now: a collection of essays

published by 2 Dollar Radio

With luminous insight and fervent prose, Andre Perry’s debut collection of personal essays, Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now, travels from Washington DC to Iowa City to Hong Kong in search of both individual and national identity. While displaying tenderness and a disarming honesty, Perry catalogs racial degradations committed on the campuses of elite universities and liberal bastions like San Francisco while coming of age in America.

The essays in Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now take the form of personal reflection, multiple choice questions, screenplays, and imagined talk-show conversations, while traversing the daily minefields of childhood schoolyards and Midwestern dive-bars. The impression of Perry’s personal journey is arresting and beguiling, while announcing the author’s arrival as a formidable American voice.

What has been said about Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now:

*A “Most Anticipated Book of 2019” —LitReactor, The A.V. Club, Big Other

“Beautiful, brilliant, bold… Tantamount to a slice from the Americana songbook. These essays are ballads, images from the self, isolated and marginalized in other countries and in his own land. These are songs of identity and sexuality and expectations the world has of African American males from those perspectives. Here’s hoping this book will mark the start of a long and varied journey for Perry. If the goal of a literary traveler is to show how connected we are to one another, his debut collection is an assured indication of deeper glories yet to come.”
—Christopher John Stephens, PopMatters

Andre Perry is an essayist and arts advocate. He received his MFA from the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program and his work has appeared in The Believer, Catapult, Granta and other journals. He co-founded Iowa City’s Mission Creek Festival, a celebration of music and literature, as well as the multidisciplinary festival of creative process, Witching Hour. He continues to live and work in Iowa City. This is his first book.