Hanif Abdurraqib is the best friend I never met. Having spent years reading his work—his essays, his poetry, his music criticism—it feels as though we’ve spent half a lifetime together sitting on floors, listening to records,
and exchanging observations about everyone from Aretha Franklin to My Chemical Romance. He doesn’t write at you, as so many culture critics do—his prose opens up and pulls you into whatever little world he’s spinning in his brain. You don’t just understand his observations, you often feel them, too. He’ll be at Town Hall in April in support of his new book There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension, which NPR, Time, Chicago Review of Books, and Lit Hub, among many others, have deemed as one of the most anticipated books of 2024. I can’t fucking wait. by Megan Seling