BLACK CHEROKEE has arrived...what a night...🙌🏾🎉 @SimonSchusterCA @SimonBooks

Despite Barriers, Black-Owned Bookstores Continue Their Legacy of Educating Communities nonprofitquarterly.org/despi…

📚 Meet the 2026 shortlist: @John_Orpheus's Black Cherokee, from @SimonSchusterCA, follows Ophelia Blue Rivers, raised by her grandmother until her world is upended, sending her on a journey through family, faith, and identity. Learn more: thewalrus.ca/afna #AmazonFNA50

Proud to announce that BLACK CHEROKEE is a finalists for the 2026 Amazon First Novel Prize ✨️🙌🏾🏆 thewalrus.ca/afna @WCA_LitAgency @SimonSchusterCA @thewalrus

Episode 103 -Antonio Michael Downing, Saga Boy and Black Cherokee blackmarketreads.com/2026/03… via @embedly

Antonio Michael Downing - Saga Boy and Black Cherokee blackmarketreads.com/2026/03…

Listening to "Black Cherokee (2025)" at buzzsprout.com/1775161/episo…

"The college gender gap, for instance, could be evidence of a rudderless, demoralized generation of young men, but it might also be the product of differing economic incentives." newyorker.com/culture/the-we… | @NewYorker

Why are Canadian made weapons being used to commit massacres and genocide in Sudan @AnitaAnandMP @MarkJCarney @GAC_Corporate @MSidhuLiberal @melaniejoly @Rob_Oliphant @MonaFortier? Again @GAC_Corporateis is not answering journalists’ questions. Criminal and shameful.

Phew! Returned from 21 days of Canadian West Coast book touring. Things I learned: 1. Lovely closeness of authors 2. Toxic closeness of authors 3. Immense euphoria of Canada's book festivals! 4. All these things may be related

BIGUPS to @blgtylr on his Pub Day! Check out MINOR BLACK FIGURES 🔥

NEW: ESPN's Stephen A. Smith says the NBA game-rigging mafia-linked scandal uncovered by the FBI is President Trump's revenge, says this is only the beginning. "Don't be surprised that the WNBA is next on his list." "Because when you've got all of these protests that have been going on out there and people that have been protesting against him and what have you, this man is coming. He’s coming." What a horrible take.

19 days in Western Canada toasting my novel BLACK CHEROKEE and meeting so many lovely writers and readers. Bigups to the Storytellers! 🙌🏾

Meet Ophelia Blue Rivers: a mixed-race half-Black half-Cherokee girl growing up in 1990s South Carolina in a community that refuses to claim her. From Grandma Blue’s cabin to church pews, high school halls, and Southern dance floors, Ophelia’s search for home and identity is as courageous as it is heartbreaking. Queenie meets Frying Plantain in BLACK CHEROKEE, an unforgettable coming-of-age novel by Antonio Michael Downing. @‌John_Orpheus bit.ly/4mdt7NE

First Taste: Antonio Michael Downing Reads From Black Cherokee debutiful.net/2025/09/02/fir…

Winnipeg Free Press had me on today's cover of their Book Pages...🙌🏾💜

On the rain-swollen banks of the River Etsi in South Carolina, Ophelia Blue Rivers—six years old in 1992—catches frogs and stretches to reach the swaying sunflowers. She’s an orphan raised in a rustic cabin by her Grandma Blue, a descendent of the Black Cherokee Freedmen. Caught in deep currents of history that she doesn’t understand, she is, as her grandma says: “half Black, half Cherokee, and all mixed up.” While Ophelia may not always understand where she came from, there’s no mistaking where she’d rather be: caught in the warmth of Grandma Blue’s cabin, listening to bedtime Cherokee legends as collard greens hiss in the frying pan. But one day, a tall stranger with a black denim jacket and a charming smile appears, and his arrival shatters Ophelia’s world. She finds herself whisked away from all she knows to live with her Auntie Oba, the boisterous woman she had only met in rumours. So begins Ophelia’s spirited, at times harrowing, search for home and family—a journey that takes her from a majority-white high school to the inner sanctum of a Black evangelical church to the throbbing dance floors of underground Southern clubs and to a final, devastating encounter with the scion of a wealthy, white family. She must ask herself: What does it mean to belong when the terms of that belonging come at such a high price? @John_Orpheus #CravingCanLit

Set in 1990s South Carolina, BLACK CHEROKEE by Antonio Michael Downing @John_Orpheus is a powerful coming-of-age novel about race, identity, and the search for home. On sale now! 📚 bit.ly/4mdt7NE

For fans of Queenie and Frying Plantain. A mixed-race Black girl searches for acceptance in a Cherokee community that denies her roots. BLACK CHEROKEE is out on Aug 19 but available for pre-order today! @John_Orpheus bit.ly/4mdt7NE