We are pleased to co-sponsor Afrofuturist and novelist Denise Crittendon, who will present her debut novel Where it Rains in Color, on Tuesday, March 28th at 7pm at the Oak Park Public Library, 14200 Oak Park Blvd. Books are available now at Book Beat and will be on hand at the presentation. Please call (248) 968-1190 for more information. Our co-sponsor hosting the event is the Oak Park Public Library who can be reached at (248) 691-7484.
Crittendon’s worldbuilding is imaginative and striking, full of lush visuals that tie the futuristic setting to African roots…patient readers will be richly rewarded by a beautiful, expansive new world. –Publisher’s Weekly
“The plot was initially inspired by a strange dream. Aspects of the dream reoccurred on several nights. Finally, the dreams culminated into a series of scenes I could no longer ignore. Due to the demands of my writing and editing jobs, I let the idea percolate over the years and began to find further inspiration from a melanin lecture I attended as well as a growing desire within me to create a powerful black planet.” –Denise Crittendon, interview
Lileala has just been named the Rare Indigo – beauty among beauties – and is about to embrace her stardom, until something threatens to change her whole lifestyle and turn the planet of Swazembi upside down.
Colonized by the descendants of Earth’s West African Dogon Tribe, the planet of Swazembi is a blazing, color-rich utopia and famous vacation center of the galaxy. No one is used to serious trouble in this idyllic, peace-loving world, least of all the Rare Indigo. But Lileala’s perfect, pampered lifestyle is about to be shattered. The unthinkable happens and her glorious midnight skin becomes infected with a mysterious disease. Where her skin should glisten like diamonds mixed with coal, instead it scabs and scars. On top of that, she starts to hear voices in her head, and everything around her becomes confusing and frightening. Lileala’s destiny, however, goes far beyond her beauty. While searching for a cure, she stumbles upon something much more valuable. A new power awakens inside her, and she realizes her whole life, and the galaxy with it, is about to change…
Denise Crittendon is an Afrofuturist. A Dreamer. A Creator of new and enchanting Black worlds. In her debut novel, Where It Rains In Color (Angry Robot Books, December 2022) she unveils Swazembi, a glitzy resort planet of floating colors and bizarre tourist attractions. Before conjuring up this paradise, she was a journalist for at least three decades, covering crime, politics, social issues and human-interest stories as a staff writer for The Detroit News and The Kansas City Star. She divides her time between Spring Valley, Nevada and her hometown, Detroit, Michigan.