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SHORTLISTED FOR THE PEN/JEAN STEIN BOOK AWARD, THE PEN/ROBERT W. BINGHAM PRIZE FOR DEBUT SHORT STORY COLLECTION, AND THE NYPL YOUNG LIONS AWARD.

A livewire debut from Dantiel W. Moniz, one of the most exciting discoveries in today’s literary landscape, Milk Blood Heat depicts the sultry lives of Floridians in intergenerational tales that contemplate human connection, race, womanhood, inheritance, and the elemental darkness in us all.

Set among the cities and suburbs of Florida, each story in Milk Blood Heat delves into the ordinary worlds of young girls, women, and men who find themselves confronted by extraordinary moments of violent personal reckoning. These intimate portraits of people and relationships scour and soothe and blast a light on the nature of family, faith, forgiveness, consumption, and what we may, or may not, owe one another.

A thirteen-year-old meditates on her sadness and the difference between herself and her white best friend when an unexpected tragedy occurs; a woman recovering from a miscarriage finds herself unable to let go of her daughter— whose body parts she sees throughout her daily life; a teenager resists her family’s church and is accused of courting the devil; servers at a supper club cater to the insatiable cravings of their wealthy clientele; and two estranged siblings take a road trip with their father’s ashes and are forced to face the troubling reality of how he continues to shape them.

Wise and subversive, spiritual and seductive, Milk Blood Heat forms an ouroboros of stories that bewitch with their truth, announcing the arrival of a bright new literary star.

Praise For Milk Blood Heat

Shortlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection, and the NYPL Young Lions Award
A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35
A Belletrist Book Club February Pick
A Roxane Gay Audacious Book Club April Pick
An Indie Next Pick
An Amazon Best Book of the Month
One of TIME’s “14 New Books You Should Read in February”
One of Elle’s “57 Most Anticipated Books Of 2021”
One of Entertainment Weekly’s “Best Books of February 2021”
One of BuzzFeed’s “75 Books to Add to your TBR List”
One of O, The Oprah Magazine’s “55 of the Most Anticipated Books of 2021” and “20 of the Best Books of February 2021 to Fall in Love With”
One of Alma’s “Favorite Books for Winter 2021”
One of Essence’s “21 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2021”
One of The Millions’ Most Anticipated of 2021 and February
One of Electric Literature’s “43 Books By Women of Color to Read in 2021” selected by RO Kwon
One of Electric Literature’s “27 Debuts to Look Forward To in the First Half of 2021” selected by Adam Vitcavage
One of Paperback Paris’s “100 Most-Anticipated New Books of 2021” and “Debut Books We’re Excited To Read This Month”
One of Book Riot’s “Horoscopes and Book Recommendations”
One of The Rumpus’s “What To Read When 2021 Is Just Around The Corner”
One of Write or Die Tribe’s “21 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2021”
One of Literary Hub’s “20 New Books to warm your cold, unfeeling heart”
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Atlantic, TIME, Washington Independent Review of Books, Kirkus, Chicago Public Library, Library Journal, Literary Hub, Audible, Largehearted Boy, Entropy, Millions, and Tampa Bay Times

“Electric… a tapestry of intimate moments punctuated by Moniz’s tight, uncompromising prose.”—TIME

“Like snow in the Sunshine State—‘There was a sense of betrayal in it. Like how dare Florida, of all places, try and turn a season’—the short stories in Moniz’s first collection constantly surprise. In unvarnished, visceral prose, Moniz uses the ‘swampy stench’ of Florida as a backdrop to explore the internal and external perfidies of womanhood.”—O, The Oprah Magazine, “20 of the Best Books of February 2021 to Fall in Love With”

“Mortality is the undercurrent in Dantiel W. Moniz’s electrifying debut story collection, Milk Blood Heat, but where there’s death there is the whir of life, too… Reading one of Moniz’s stories is like holding your breath underwater while letting the salt sting your fresh wounds. It’s exhilarating and shocking and even healing. The power in these stories rests in their veracity, vitality and vulnerability.”—Washington Post

“Life’s inflection points, mundane but universal, mark the Black and brown Floridians who populate these stories… But in Moniz’s collection, the ordinary experience of being female is laced with a kind of enchantment… Entire stories seem bathed in a warm radiance…One can glow with both love and rage.”—New York Times

“The stories in Moniz’s debut collection—many of which shine a multihued light on Black girlhood in Florida—are to not only be read but felt. Like Danielle Evans and Lauren Groff, Moniz is unafraid to expose the darkened corners of the Sunshine State, and of female desire.”—O, The Oprah Magazine