It’s not such a large leap to see a future America that will do this to entertain and to make money.” We are the only advanced democracy that does that. We live in a government that murders people. I don’t like violence, which explains why the violence in our society bothers me so much. It doesn’t have to be that way, which is why I wrote this story.”Īs Adjei-Brenyah was writing the book, he knew parts of it were going to be brutal and violent. We also have privatized prisons that are using incarcerated people as a way to make money. No one, especially politicians, wants to talk about incarcerated people and how our prison system is not preventing crime. These are human beings, and they are being dehumanized.

“It bothers me when I see such a lack of compassion in our prison system. Today, Adjei-Brenyah believes most crime is a product of poverty. We tallied the votes from this year’s Best of the Capital Region contest in 100 categories. In college, when Trayvon Martin was murdered, that’s when I really began to see the injustice of the justice system.” People aren’t all good and all bad.’ As I’ve grown in my own awareness I’ve begun to see the way we incarcerate people as inhumane and unfair.

'Once I asked him how he could do that, and he said, ‘It’s not that simple. “My father was a defense attorney, and I know he defended some people that had committed murders,' he said. CAPE (Criminal Action Penal Entertainment) is a televised fighting league where the incarcerated battle to the death in hopes of one day gaining their freedom.Īdjei-Brenyah's latest book is being released in early May. It’s an America where prisoners are used for savage entertainment. The two main characters in his latest book are Loretta Thurwar and Hurricane Staxxx, lead links in a team of enslaved fighters who can if they keep winning be set free from their private prison of the future. I was following these characters and discovering where they were taking me. I had no idea how that story was going to end. “But I overshot that by a couple hundred pages,' Adjei-Brenyah said. His newest book and his first novel “Chain-Gang All-Stars” (Pantheon) was originally going to be in the first book. He also attended events by the New York State Writers Institute, where he met writers Junot Diaz and Colson Whitehead, and eventually connected with George Saunders, who became his writing mentor when Adjei-Brenyah pursued his MFA at Syracuse University. During his senior year at UAlbany, Adjei-Brenyah interned and published stories at the Times Union.

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