Nobody's Magic

The Wild Detectives is thrilled to welcome Destiny O. Birdsong to present her novel Nobody’s Magic.

In this glittering triptych novel, Suzette, Maple and Agnes, three Black women with albinism, call Shreveport, Louisiana home. At the bustling crossroads of the American South and Southwest, these three women find themselves at the crossroads of their own lives. This novel, told in three parts, is a searing meditation on grief, female strength, and self-discovery set against a backdrop of complicated social and racial histories. Nobody’s Magic is a testament to the power of family–the ones you’re born in and the ones you choose. And in these three narratives, among the yearning and loss, each of these women may find a seed of hope for the future.

Destiny will be in conversation with Ben Fountain to discuss the novel and the ideas behind her writing. Please join us for a very special night of literature.

Destiny O. Birdsong’s writing has appeared in The Paris Review Daily, African American Review, and Catapult, among other publications. She has received the Academy of American Poets Prize and the Richard G. Peterson Poetry Prize. Her critically-acclaimed debut collection of poems, Negotiations, was longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Voelcker Award and published by Tin House Books.

Ben Fountain’s novel Devil Makes Three is forthcoming from Flatiron Books. His work has received the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, the PEN/Cerrulli Award for Excellence in Sports Writing, and a Whiting Writers Award, among other honors. He lives in Dallas.