Na Kim
We couldn’t be more excited to reveal the Na Kim-designed cover for Brontez Purnell’s 100 Boyfriends, which we’ll publish on February 2, 2021. Brontez–a widely acclaimed underground writer, filmmaker, musician, and performance artist–writes with the peerless zeal, insight, and horniness of a gay punk messiah. From dirty warehouses and gentrified bars in Oakland to desolate farm towns in Alabama, he indexes desire, desperation, race, and loneliness with a startling blend of levity and vulnerability. Together, the slice-of-life tales that writhe within 100 Boyfriends are a singular and uncompromising vision of an unexposed queer underbelly.
Danez Smith, author of Homie, put it best: “Purnell’s autofiction/memoir/whatever the hell this marvelously sad and intoxicating book is shook me up good with its honesty and blunt-to-face endings, the jokes and stories I didn’t know we were allowed to tell outside of circles of faggots and misfits.”
Learn more about (and pre-order) the book here, be sure to follow Brontez on Instagram at @brontezpurnell, and check out these amazing endorsements of the book below.
“Each story in 100 Boyfriends is a minor eclipse: stunning in scope, technically blinding, and entirely miraculous. I laughed and I cried and I laughed until I cried— Brontez Purnell is a marvel.” –Bryan Washington, author of Lot
“No one writes like Brontez Purnell. It’s not just that he is hilariously irreverent, which he is, but that he reserves reverence for that which is deserving. 100 Boyfriends is like a good lover, at turns vulgar and vulnerable, dirty and desperate, and always grinding toward magic.” –Justin Torres, author of We the Animals
“Brontez Purnell has such seemingly casual genius that at times you forget your reading a book and are transported to some couch/bus/basement where the drugs are really good and your friend is really funny, maybe your weird closeted cousin is on HarlemHookups in the corner, and all of a sudden your friend says some fucking Sappho ass, weird ass, brilliant ass bullshit. I love this slut of a book, it’s a slut ass maker. 100 Boyfriends or no new boyfriends at all, Purnell’s autofiction/memoir/whatever the hell this marvelously sad and intoxicating book is shook me up good with its honesty and blunt-to-face endings, the jokes and stories I didn’t know we were allowed to tell outside of circles of faggots and misfits. But this book is in those circles, makes you tea and steals for you, it invites us in, but would we mind shutting the hell up cause it’s a little hungover? The light is coming through the windows so clear.” –Danez Smith, author of Homie
“The stories in 100 Boyfriends took me on a journey: They made me laugh. They made me gasp. They made me feel. Brontez Purnell is a vibrant literary voice you won’t soon forget. I love this book.” –De’Shawn Charles Winslow, author of In West Mills