Monday, October 13, 2025 at 7:00 PM
Skylight Books, Los Angeles
 **A bold novel about a black painter caught up in the currents of art, faith, and desire.** New York simmers with heat and unrest as Wyeth, a painter, finds himself at an impasse in his own work. After attending a dubious show put on by a collective of careerist artists, he retreats to a bar in the West Village where he meets Keating, a former seminarian. Over the long summer, as the two get to know each another, they talk and argue about God, sex, and art. Meanwhile, at his job working for an art restorer, Wyeth begins to investigate the life and career of a forgotten, minor black artist. His search yields potential answers to questions that Wyeth is only now beginning to ask about what it means to be a black artist making black art amid the mess and beauty of life itself. As he did so brilliantly in the Booker Prize finalist _Real Life_ and the bestselling _The Late Americans_, Brandon Taylor brings alive a captivating set of characters, this time at work and at play in the competitive art world. _Minor Black Figures_ is a vividly etched portrait, both sweeping and tender, of friendship, creativity, belief, and the deep connections among them. **Brandon Taylor** is the author of the novels _The Late Americans_ and _Real Life_, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and named a _New York Times Book Review_ Editors’ Choice and a Science + Literature Selected Title by the National Book Foundation. His collection _Filthy Animals_, a national bestseller, was awarded The Story Prize and shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. He is the 2022-2023 Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.