Author Spotlight: P. Djèlí Clark

February 21, 2025

Welcome back to my Black History Month spotlight. Today we're talking about one of my favorite authors -- in fact, I might even consider him my favorite author, not just one of my favorites. This was actually the very first idea I had for this spotlight series, which inspired all the rest. Before I even knew it would be a series, I wanted to do a spotlight about P. Djèlí Clark, a Black American author of African and Carribbean descent, who's known for his unique universes and strong female characters.

They say not to judge a book by its cover, but every once in a while, I see one with cover art so eye-catching that I have to read the book it's attached to. That's actually how I discovered my favorite book series when I saw book one on display at the public library; but that series is written by white authors, so we're not talking about that today.

Coincidentally, though, it's also how I discovered the works of P. Djèlí Clark.

At this time, I've purchased three of his books, but I've definitely developed a sense of loyalty and want to read everything he's written. While I have two major book series that I consider favorites, I have to admit I haven't yet read anything else the authors have written outside of those series. I'd like to, at some point, but it's the characters in their stories more than the authors themselves I've become devoted to.

P. Djèlí Clark is a little different in the fact that all three of the books I've read by him are unrelated to each other, taking place in different cities, different time periods, and having different characters. But they do all have a few things in common; and those things are the reason I love his writing so much and have come to refer to him as "the only male author I trust."

Going back to how I originally discovered his works, it was actually my favorite book series, the one I discovered on a fateful day at the public library, that was responsible for me finding out about P. Djèlí Clark. The cover art for the series was done by an artist named Chris McGrath. I was looking at McGrath's website and some of his other artwork when I noticed the cover art for Clark's novella, The Black God's Drums.

When I saw the cover of this novella, I immediately wanted to read it. I was drawn to the vibrancy of the colors, but most importantly, the brave and proud look on the main character's face. She was a character I wanted to get to know. So I decided to order the book online and give it a try.

The book is set in New Orleans right after the American Civil War; however, it's an alternate-history and fantasy setting, which seems to be Clark's forte. The main character is a 13-year-old girl, and based on the cover art, I was anticipating a story with a pretty cool young female protagonist. And that's exactly what I got; however, in addition to her, I also got a lesbian airship captain with a mechanical leg who frequents brothels, and two nuns with shady secrets who steal a toxic gas weapon. That's a lot of cool female characters for one book.

When I finished reading it, I wrote about those characters on Facebook -- I won't lie, I even copied my above descriptions of them directly from the Facebook post I wrote almost 5 years ago -- and also included that a minor character, who was male, was described as "pretty."

It might sound like a small thing, but the language we use is important; and describing a male character in that way actually goes a long way toward normalizing that sort of language when referring to men, which in turn helps lessen the divide between the binary sexes instead of further legitimizing the idea of patriarchy.

If I hadn't known that P. Djèlí Clark was a male author, I wouldn't have guessed it from his writing -- and I mean that as the highest form of compliment. Not only were his female characters the main characters in the story, but they were commonplace, well fleshed-out, never inappropriately sexualized, and they were treated exactly as any male character would be.

When Clark announced on his social media that his first full-length novel was coming out, I was excited to read it and purchased it as a birthday gift to myself the year after reading The Black God's Drums.

The second story of his that I'd read, A Master of Djinn, didn't disappoint me.

Naturally, I want to avoid any spoilers or giving away too much about the plot of any of these books, as I'm trying to promote him as an author -- which means I want you to read the books for yourself. What I will say about the plots is that they've all involved magic or monsters of some kind, and all take place in some sort of alternate-history setting. The Black God's Drums, as I already mentioned, includes an alternate history version of the Civil War in which the Confederacy won and New Orleans is a neutral, independent territory; A Master of Djinn takes place in Cairo, Egypt in the year 1912, but in a universe where the veil between the regular realm and the magical one was opened 40 years ago, and now the government has its own Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities. Ring Shout, the third book by Clark that I've read, is focused on the KKK in the U.S. state of Georgia, the year is 1922, and the members of the Klan are not only humans but include something even more sinister than your run-of-the-mill racist.

And all of them basically swap the gender roles of the characters. Where most books feature majority-male characters and women may only show up in supporting roles or as love interests, Clark's books are the exact opposite -- and there's usually a queer twist as well.

I already mentioned the lesbian airship captain. A Master of Djinn's lead character is a woman who's in a passionate relationship with another woman, and who presents as a masc lesbian based on her clothing choices -- she's always in a suit and a "bowler" style hat. Additionally, her work partner is a hijabi woman (this story does not shy away from including Muslim characters and cultural references either), and while I said I wanted to avoid spoilers, the main villain might also be a woman. Forget I said that before you read it.

By the time I got to Ring Shout, I was actually almost surprised that the character who serves as narrator is a woman who's romantically/sexually involved with a man -- but hey, it adds a little diversity to the relationships shown. However, of the three female characters who are introduced as leads in the first chapter, one of them is, in fact, a queer woman (who posed as a man in order to fight in the military), while the other two are shown to have relationships with men. There's also a wise older woman, three "aunties" the narrator visits, and a female scientist in their circle of resistance fighters.

So as you can see, P. Djèlí Clark seems like a man who is very aware of the discrepancies between male and female characters in much of fiction, and is doing his part to tip the scale in the other direction. While many fantasy and action stories, especially those written by men, focus on hypermasculine bravado and relegate female characters to love interests and secondary characters only -- or even worse, a collection of poorly-described body parts -- Clark's dedication to truly positive and fleshed-out representation of women stands out.

And in spite of all the sapphic relationships that appear throughout his stories, they are never presented in the weird, fetishized way a lot of straight* male authors would present them. He doesn't make a spectacle of them, but presents them as just as valid and natural as any opposite-sex attraction or relationship. Fatma and Siti's relationship in A Master of Djinn is particularly loving and almost comes off as if an actual sapphic person wrote it.

(*I'm unsure if Clark is straight or falls somewhere under the bi+ umbrella, but I do know that he's married to a woman, so he is some form of female-attracted.)

His books don't just include female and queer representation, though. The majority of his stories are centered on characters who are either African themselves or Black Americans with ties to African culture, sometimes also discussing slavery and other forms of racism.

Clark himself, in addition to being an author, is a historian who holds a doctorate and serves as a history professor at a university, specializing in African American history. His bio states that he was born in New York, spent several years of his childhood living in Trinidad and Tobago, where his parents are from, before moving back to New York at 8 and to Texas at 12. He's now employed by the University of Connecticut and lives there with his wife. His real name being Dexter Gabriel, he chose a pen name for his fiction in order to keep it separate from his academic works. Phenderson was his grandfather's name, while Clark was his mother's maiden name, and the word djèlí is another name for a griot, which is a historian, poet or storyteller from Western Africa.

It's obvious his African heritage is important to him, and he's using his education as a historian as well as his skills as a writer to share that with the world in more ways than one.

In addition to A Master of Djinn, a few other short stories and novellas take place in this same universe. It's my goal to read all of them since I was a fan of the novel, but admittedly I don't purchase new books to read as frequently as I would like due to all the stressors of life -- plus books are kind of expensive unless you check them out from the library. And while libraries are cool, I definitely plan to own as much as Clark's material as I can, so I've been focusing on slowly purchasing his works one at a time.

Although I'm excited to eventually read the rest of the stories in that series, I think the next novella I'm going to purchase from him is actually The Dead Cat Tail Assassins. It only came out last year, and the name -- and once again, the cover art -- is calling my name.

Regardless of what I read next, I'm thankful that I stumbled across his works and accidentally discovered one of my favorite authors. If you're tired of male authors who are terrible at writing women, or would simply like to see some badass female, queer, and African representation, then do yourself a favor and check out his works ASAP.

Follow him on Instagram to stay connected.

tags: black history month, books