Kiese Laymon is a Black Southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi, and the Libbie Shearn Moody Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University in Houston. Laymon is the author of Long Division and How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. His best-selling Heavy: An American Memoir won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times. His new book, City Summer, Country Summer, will be published April 2025.