“It is barely the summer—just the end of June—and already two teenaged boys have been killed.” So begins Amina Gautier’s debut collection At Risk, winner of the Flannery O’Conner Award for Short Fiction. In it, we find a dangerous world predominantly populated by vulnerable teens, preteens, and the adults whose best intentions cannot save them. In story after story in this collection, Gautier engages and interrogates stereotypes about urban black culture.
