Brandon Taylor On His New Novel, 'Minor Black Figures'

The Book Review

The New York Times

Books, Arts

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 10 October 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Brandon Taylor's debut novel, “Real Life,” was a finalist for the Booker Prize in 2020, and he quickly followed that up with the story collection “Filthy Animals” and another novel, “The Late Americans." On this week's episode, MJ Franklin speaks with Taylor about his latest work, “Minor Black Figures.”

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the book review podcast. I'm M.J. Franklin. I'm an editor here at the New York Times Book Review, and this week on the podcast, we have an author you've probably heard of if you've been keeping up with literary fiction at all over the past few years. That author is Brandon Taylor.
0:23.0	Brandon's first book, Rear Life, published in February 2020, right before the pandemic
0:27.1	changed life as we know it, and that book went on to become a Booker Prize finalist.
0:32.5	He followed that up with two other books, Filthy Animals in 2021 and the Late Americans in 2023.
0:39.1	Now Brandon is back with a brand new book, Minor Black Figures.
0:43.7	It's a novel about art and race and class and religion and love and New York and so much more.
0:50.2	He joins us today to discuss.
0:54.9	Brandon, welcome.
0:56.5	Thanks for having me.
0:58.0	Or I should probably say welcome back because you joined the book review podcast in 2021 to talk about Sally Rooney's beautiful world where are you, which you reviewed for us.
1:09.1	And then that interview was conducted by Pamela Paul,
1:12.0	who was the editor at the time. But we've spoken previously because right before your first book
1:17.5	real life came out, I wrote a profile of you for the book review. That was remote. Now we're in
1:22.9	person. Welcome back. Oh, thank you. How far we've come. How far we've come?
1:27.8	I feel it's like that Vanity Fair, Billy Elish same interview. Do you know about this? Yes, I, yes. So for anyone listening who doesn't know, every year they interview Billy Eilish. And through that all together, you get to see an artist's evolution. So I'm excited to talk to you, learn about your new book,
1:45.9	hear about what you've been up to, which is quite a lot. But to get started, let's talk about
1:50.6	your new book, Minor Black Figures. Can you just give us a brief setup, spoiler-free, but tell us
1:58.0	what is this book about? Minor Black Figures is about Wyeth, who is a black, gay male painter living in New York
2:06.2	City, and we encounter him at the start of a sort of hazy late summer scenario where he's
2:13.6	in the midst of an artist block.
2:15.8	He doesn't know how to paint the moment, whatever that is.
2:18.8	He's in search of the real, whatever that means indeed.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The New York Times, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The New York Times and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.