KING: Many of your stories are filled with brutality. And if you - and I think it's a great privilege to think you are not. And so because no one writes in a vacuum and no one comes out of a vacuum, you're kind of doing something political. So I think if you write fiction in anything that's not a vacuum, on some level I think it's political.

And sometimes just existing in a space - and proudly and loudly - is somehow political. I think that most identities, where they intersect with the culture that they come out of, there's politics involved. It's pretty much unavoidable that my work engages subjects that are highly politicized.

I mean, that said, I myself do feel compelled to write about certain things. NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH: I don't want to, like, suggest that any black writer has any particular thing they have to do. And I wonder, as a black writer, do you feel that that is partially your responsibility, to have a political take on things? But one thing that separates you from other authors I've read in that genre is that your writing seems to be explicitly political.

NOEL KING, BYLINE: You write in this field of speculative fiction, or dystopian fiction - whatever you want to call it. Or is it really exaggeration? He spoke with Noel King. And that experience informs the short story collection he calls 'Friday Black.' Adjei-Brenyah's book makes its points by exaggerating race and class divisions and consumer culture. He worked in the holiday season, which peaks on Black Friday. Years ago, the writer Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah worked in a clothing store.

Nana kwame friday black