Brandon Taylor (writer)

Taylor wrote his debut novel, Real Life, in less than five weeks, and he later explained his approach: "I was like, I'm going to sit down and knock this out so I can get on with my life.... Writing a novel ruins your life in really specific ways. Because you have to live inside of it. It's just this sustained exercise in being miserable."[22] It is "a campus novel imagined from the vantage of a character who is usually shunted to the sidelines ... a gay black student from a small town in Alabama".

Published in 2020 by Riverhead Books, Real Life received critical acclaim.[23] Describing Taylor's work in the Los Angeles Times, Bethanne Patrick wrote: "His voice might best be described as a controlled roar of rage and pain, its energy held together by the careful thinking of a mind accustomed to good behavior."[24] According to the review of Real Life by Jeremy O. Harris in The New York Times, "It is a curious novel to describe, for much of the plot involves excavating the profound from the mundane. As in the modernist novels of Woolf and Tolstoy cited in passing throughout, the true action of Taylor's novel exists beneath the surface, buried in subterranean spaces."[25] Michael Arceneaux wrote in Time magazine: "Taylor's book isn't about overcoming trauma or the perils of academia or even just the experience of inhabiting a black body in a white space, even as Real Life does cover these subjects. Taylor is also tackling loneliness, desire and — more than anything — finding purpose, meaning and happiness in one's own life... How fortunate we are for Real Life, another stunning contribution from a community long deserving of the chance to tell its stories." Taylor himself has said: "I hope that it's a novel that challenges people to think about the ways that we fit together in our relationships with one another. I hope it makes people think really deeply about both the ways that they are harmed, and that they do harm to others."[26]

Taylor's book tour to publicize his novel was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictions on travel and public gatherings.[27] Real Life was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize.[28] The New York Times included the novel on its list of "100 Notable Books of 2020".[29]

In 2021, GQ reported that Real Life was being adapted into a movie featuring Kid Cudi.[6]

Taylor's collection of short stories, Filthy Animals, was awarded The Story Prize in 2022.[30] In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Thomas Mar Wee wrote in praise of the book: "Neither cold nor detached, these stories are suffused with a warmth and humanity that recalled for me the uncanniness of Raymond Carver, the empathy of Alice Munro, and the meticulous irony of Chekhov."[31]

Taylor's second novel, The Late Americans, was published in 2023. It follows a group of writers in Iowa City, where he lived while getting an MFA at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.[32] While critical responses to the novel were mostly positive, the reception was more mixed compared to his two previous works.[33]