THE EPHEMERA COLLECTOR BY STACY NATHANIEL JACKSON

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A tenacious curator fights to save her beloved library and a new, groundbreaking archive in this epic Afrofuturist debut.

“But the Earth is falling (apart), not just the sky, but humans too. They are tuned out. Appear to have given up. Some are preparing to flee; some are preparing for war. Where I stand, Im not quite sure.”

The year is 2035, and Los Angeles County is awash in a tangelo haze of wildfire smoke. Xandria Anastasia Brown spends her days deep in the archives of the Huntington Library as the curator of African American Ephemera and associate curator of American Historical Manuscripts, supported by an array of AI personal assistants and health bots. Descended from a family of obsessive collectors who took part in the Great Migration, Xandria grew up immersed in African American ephemera and realia: boots worn by Negro Troopers during the Civil War, Black ATA tennis rackets, bandanas worn by the Crips….

Although Xandrias work may preserve collective memory, she is losing a grasp on her own. Evren, her new health bot, wont stop reminding her that her symptoms of long COVID are worsening; not to mention that severe asthma, chronic fatigue, grief, and worrying lapses in reality keep disrupting progress on a new Octavia E. Butler exhibition, cataloging the new Diwata Collection, and organizing the Huntington against a stealth corporate takeover. Then, one morning a colleague Xandria cant place calls to wish her a happy birthdayand the library goes into an emergency lockdown.

Sequestered in the archive with only her adaptive technology and flickering intuition, Xandria fears that her lifes work is in dangerthe Diwata Collection, a radical blueprint for humanitys survival. Up against a faceless enemy and unsure of who her human or AI allies truly are, she must make a choice.

A lyrical and strikingly original saga,The Ephemera Collectorannounces Stacy Nathaniel Jackson as a singular new voice in fiction.

32 black-and-white images

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