Novelist Ladee Hubbard's reading list focused on black identity

Hubbard is a professor of Africana studies at Tulane University and earned a bachelor's degree from Princeton University, where she was mentored by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison. Hubbard went on to receive her master's in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin and a doctorate in folklore and mythology from UCLA. Hubbard was raised in Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands and is a recipient of a 2016 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award. On Nov. 17, she will be a featured author at the Tampa Bay Times Festival of Reading, where she will discuss her debut novel, The Talented Ribkins.

What's on your nightstand?

One book I recently read that I would recommend is Vengeance by Zachary Lazar, a highly original consideration of criminal justice in the United States. A mix of fiction and nonfiction, it is a compelling and strikingly honest account of the author's interactions with an inmate at Angola prison in Louisiana who may or may not be guilty of murder. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in the broader implications of our prison system and how ideas about justice reflect the values of society as a whole.

The book I have not yet had time to read but want to is A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley. Everything I have heard and read about this much lauded collection of stories has been intriguing. It is the very next book on my reading list.

Piper Castillo, Times staff writer