Naima Coster is the author of Halsey Street, a novel of family, loss, and renewal, set in a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn. Halsey Street has been recommended as a must-read by People, Essence, BitchMedia, The Root, Well-Read Black Girl and The Skimm, among others. It was a Finalist for the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Fiction.
Naima’s second novel, Didn’t Never Know, is the story of the integration of a public high school in a small Southern town, which sets off a chain of events that bonds two families together in unexpected and complicated ways over the course of their lives. It is forthcoming from Grand Central Publishing.
Naima’s stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Rumpus, Aster(ix), Kweli, The Paris Review Daily, and elsewhere. She has taught writing to students in jail, youth programs, and universities. Naima is currently visiting faculty at the MFA program at City College in Harlem and Antioch University in L.A.