Authors Damon Young (What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker) and Kiese Laymon (Heavy: An American Memoir) will discuss the trials and tribulations of putting out their debut books, publishing, their creative process, and other topics in this fourth installment of our new LIVE series "How to survive in America" hosted by Damon Young.

Kiese Laymon is an American writer, editor and a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of three full-length books: a novel, Long Division (2013), and two memoirs, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America (2013) and Heavy (2018). Laymon's work deals with American racism, feminism, family, masculinity, geography, Hip-hop and Southern black life. His provocations, essays, and other works of short fiction appear on his blog, Cold Drank. Laymon has written essays and stories for Gawker, ESPN.com, The Washington Post, the New York Times, NPR, BuzzFeed, and The Guardian, among others.

Damon Young is writer, critic, humorist, satirist, and professional Black person. He's a co-founder and editor in chief of VerySmartBrothas -- coined "the blackest thing that ever happened to the internet" by The Washington Post — and a columnist for GQ. Damon's debut memoir -- What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir In Essays (Ecco/HarperCollins) --  is a tragicomic exploration of the angsts, anxieties, and absurdities of existing while black in America, and won Barnes & Noble's 2019 Discover Award. It was also longlisted for the PEN America Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award, nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and is a Krause Essay Prize nominee. NPR, which named it one of the best books of 2019, called it an "outstanding collection of nonfiction."  Damon currently resides in Pittsburgh's Northside, with his wife, two children, and his faithful bottles of Nexium and Lisinopril.

The Show Must Go On(line) is made possible thanks to generous support from the Benter Foundation, The Heinz Endowments, the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation, the Opportunity Fund, The Pittsburgh Foundation, and an Anonymous Foundation.

How to survive in America w Damon Young ft. Kiese Laymon presented by City of Asylum