“A significant new voice in fiction, Norris has written what may be one of the defining novels of the era at the intersection between Black Lives Matter and COVID-19.”—BUZZFEED BOOKS

Keenan Norris is a novelist, essayist and scholar. His latest novel is The Confession of Copeland Cane, the winner of the Northern California Book Award. His essays have garnered the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award in Music, Theater and Performing Arts and the Folio: Eddie Award. His other books include the non-fiction work Chi Boy: Native Sons and Chicago Reckonings and his debut novel Brother and the Dancer, which received the James D. Houston Award.

Keenan’s feature pieces and articles have appeared in numerous forums, including The Nation, Alta, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, TED-ED, and Zyzzyva, while his short fiction has been published in several anthologies of California literature.

He has served as Rea Visiting Writer at the University of Virginia (2021) and Lannan Visiting Writer at the Institute of American Indian Arts (2023). In 2025, he became the non-fiction editor for Callaloo: Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters. He is Professor of American Literature and Creative Writing and coordinator of the Steinbeck Fellows Program at San Jose State University.

“KEENAN NORRIS announces himself as a voice for a generation living through an age of normalized absurdity. Norris’s voice is necessary and vital—and a call to take heed.”

—MICHAEL DATCHER, AUTHOR OF ANIMATING BLACK AND BROWN LIBERATION: A THEORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURES