2019 National Book Award Longlist

“With Build Yourself a Boat, Camonghne Felix heralds a thrillingly new form of storytelling.”
-Morgan Parker, author of Magical Negro

This is about what grows through the wreckage. This is an anthem of survival and a look at what might come after. A view of what floats and what, ultimately, sustains.

Build Yourself a Boat redefines the language of collective and individual trauma through lyric and memory.

Camonghne Felix is a rising star associated with Haymarket’s very successful BreakBeat Poets cohort, which includes Eve Ewing, Mahogany L. Browne, Jamila Woods, Kevin Coval, Nate Marshall, Fatimah Asghar, and many others. Following on the success of Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric, and the ongoing prominence of Black Lives Matter movement, there is a renewed interest in poetry and prose that documents the Black experience in America.