Boy: Personal Essays and Poems

by Da'Shawn Mosley

BOY is the debut of Da’Shawn Mosley, a gifted young writer, not even yet twenty, whose comprehension of the way we inhabit this world is exceptionally beyond his years. “He has a story to tell,” wrote South Carolina Now, “one that is missing from so many young writers’ life experiences.” In this chapbook of fourteen poems and three memoir-style essays, Mosley examines loss and the act of recovery through the lens of his own adolescence as well as the growth of others. In doing so, he creates a remarkably accessible work of art for an audience who will surely recognize his technical skill and wait restlessly to see what he writes next.

47 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 24, 2013

About the author

Da'Shawn Mosley is the associate editor and culture and review editor of Sojourners magazine. He earned a B.A. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago and graduated from the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, where he studied and briefly taught creative writing. Da'Shawn and his work were featured in the PBS documentary "Becoming an Artist," directed by the Oscar and Emmy-winning filmmakers Kirk Simon and Karen Goodman. His poem "I Don't Know" was published in the anthology "The Best Teen Writing of 2011" by former poetry editor of "The New Yorker" Alice Quinn, NAACP Image Award winner Nikki Giovanni, Pulitzer Prize winner Vijay Seshadri, and other luminaries. In 2012, he was named a U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts by the White House and the Department of Education. An excerpt of his essay "Dark Matter" was exhibited in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, and his fiction earned him the 2019 A Suite of One's Own: A Writer's Residency, awarded by Kiese Laymon. Da'Shawn is a native son of South Carolina.