Reviewers & Critics
ISMAIL Muhammad, the criticism editor at the Believer, is one of the sharpest young critics working today. Pick up any recent issue of the bimonthly literary magazine, published by the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas, and you’ll get a sense of his curatorial eye; for an inspiring jolt from his exquisite writing style, check out his recent Paris Review Daily essay, “On John Coltrane’s ‘Alabama,’” and his 2019 essay on Literary Hub, “Walking With the Ghosts of Black Los Angeles.”
Muhammad is also a contributing editor of a contributing writer at the and a member of the board of the National Book Critics Circle. His work, which focuses on literature, art, identity, and Black popular and visual culture, has appeared in the and the In addition to writing long-form pieces on James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, and Toni Morrison, he has reviewed books by Durga Chew-Bose, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Teju Cole, Harry Dodge, Ottessa Moshfegh, Jenny Offill, and Jesmyn Ward, among others.
