I hoped that people would like it, but I didn’t think that they would respond in the way that they did.

It’s been incredible and very unexpected. How’s the response been since it was published?

Speaking of Black women performing at work, your recent essay on The Cut, “ It Doesn’t Matter If We Behave,” is in line with this very topic. And I wanted to think about the ways that Black women perform labor on every level, whether that’s in the workplace or in their personal lives. As women in this industry, we can agree that we give so much of ourselves to the work, to the job, and to the industry as a whole. There’s something very heartbreaking about that. As a Black woman, she feels so invisible-both to herself and to the institution that she’s given herself over to. Obviously, there’s the actual physical work, but then there’s also the emotional work that Mickey does in all of the roles that she inhabits. Initially, the working title for Homebodies was Women Working, so this quote is the guiding principle of the book. Lord do black girls and black women work,” by Tressie McMillan Cottom? I imagined it being a short story, but Nicole said, “No, this is a novel.” I always love to see which quotes authors preface their books with. We had to write five pages and this is what began to pour out. I was in Nicole Dennis-Benn’s writing workshop and needed to turn something in. What was happening in your life when you decided to write Homebodies? “There’s no world where I could’ve done what Mickey did, but I identified with those emotions and thought other people could relate, too.”īelow, Denton-Hurst speaks to about her debut, the different ways that Black women are expected to perform, and why she hopes that her work will make its way into your group chat conversations. But unlike Mickey, she began a job-at New York Magazine-shortly after. “When I was laid off at the end of 2019 from my job,” says Denton-Hurst, “I felt very knocked off my path.” Being that she's a Virgo, this sudden change took a toll. Rather than sticking around in New York, she returns home to Maryland to figure out her next move. Inspired by events from her own life, the story is about Mickey Hayward, a twenty-something journalist who unexpectedly gets laid off from her media job.

As a current writer at New York Magazine’s The Strategist, Denton-Hurst has made her first foray into the literary world with her debut novel Homebodies.

Thick tressie cottom