Doug Jones Author Talk and Book Signing

Tickets include a signed copy of Doug's novel, as well as the opportunity for a meet and greet after the event.

In this powerful debut reminiscent of Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight, two men in Atlanta reconcile their human dignity against the price of their professional ambitions working for a real estate development company displacing Black residents in preparation for the 1996 Olympics.

Daily interactions between Jacob and Daniel are a powder keg of sexual tension and uncertainty. A recent Morehouse graduate and Brooklyn transplant, Jacob fears that accepting the truth of his sexuality will disappoint the hopes his parents have for him to lead a respectable life. Grieving the death of his mother while searching for answers about a father he has never known, Daniel, an Atlanta native, has resigned himself to the reality that men who love men don’t have happy endings.

When Jacob meets Sherman, a social worker fighting for one of the families being displaced by the project, he must decide if rejecting security is worth the risk of embracing the unknown. In the midst of navigating his grief, and volatile relationship with Jacob, Daniel learns of his father’s identity. Though meeting his father could provide Daniel with the closure he has always sought, the distance between what Daniel wants and what he’s willing to do for it remains a question only he can answer.

Douglas E. Jones graduated from Morehouse College and received an MFA from Columbia University. In 2007, he was an inaugural Lambda Literary Fellow at American Jewish University, where he studied with Dorothy Allison. His nonfiction has been included in the anthology Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature & Art and his poetry has been published in Sojourner: Black Gay Voices in the Age of AIDS. Doug is a full-time, licensed real estate agent in Brooklyn, New York, and Atlanta, Georgia. He lives in Atlanta. The Fantasies of Future Things is his debut novel.

TIMELY STORY ABOUT DISPLACEMENT AND GENTRIFICATION: This may be a story set in the 1900s in Atlanta, GA, but this is a timely and timeless story. This novel serves as a microcosm that only grows more real as gentrification and the displacement of marginalized communities becomes even more pervasive in the U.S. This story is also explicitly timely to Atlanta in the present, as citizens try to "Stop Cop City," resisting the construction of a massive police training compound planned in SE Atlanta. Also a story about The Olympics, sexuality, morality, Black masculinity, and conversations about displacement and infrastructure, this is an incredibly layered novel that will appeal to a wide range of readers.

ANTICIPATING AWARDS, RECOGNITION, AND CRITICAL ACCLAIM: Early portions of this novel received "honorable recognition" from the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation. The author was a 2007 LAMBDA Literary Fellow, his non-fiction has been included in the anthology Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature & Art (Third World Press) and his poetry has been published in Sojourner: Black Gay Voices in the Age of AIDS (Other Countries Press). We anticipate awards attention and critical recognition.