Kodiak Brinks has released his debut album, Stand for Nothing, Fall for Anything. A live mixture of hip hop, spoken word and jazz, the album was recorded at Doc 8 Studios in Harlem and features a lineup of acclaimed musicians: keyboardist Kelvin Sholar, saxophonist Brian Horton, bassist Ameen Saleem, drummer The Apple Juice Kid, trumpeter Jonathan Powell, and turntablist DJ Frane. Brinks – also known as Adam Mansbach – is the author of the novel Shackling Water (Doubleday, 2002) and the poetry collection genius b-boy cynics getting weeded in the garden of delights (Subway & Elevated, 2002). His new novel, Angry Black White Boy, or The Miscegenation of Macon Detornay, will be published by Crown/Three Rivers Press in March 2005. It is also soon to be a major motion picture from director Adam Bhala Lough. Mansbach is the former editor of the short-lived hip hop journal Elementary, called ‘the best thing ever written about hip hop’ by Michael Eric Dyson. He has worked as a roadie for the Elvin Jones Jazz Machine, and an Artistic Consultant to Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies. His writing has appeared in such publications as The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, JazzTimes, Slate, Wax Poetics, and The Best Music Writing 2004 (Dacapo, 2004). His short story, ‘Crown Heist,’ from the anthology Brooklyn Noir (Akashic, 2004) was recently nominated for an Edgar Award. A frequent lecturer on music, race and literature, Mansbach has spoken or performed at such venues as the Harlem Book Fair, The Boston Globe Book Fair, PEN America Styleworks, Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Columbia University’s Whitney M. Young Center for Human Rights, the University of California at Santa Cruz, The Living Word Festival, Sidwell Friends Academy, the University of New Hampshire, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Nuyorican Poets’ Cafe. Mansbach currently lives in Berkeley, California, where he teaches writing workshops for Youth Speaks. He is at work on a third novel, tentatively titled The End of the Jews, and has recently completed a screenplay, Nature of the Beast, with co-writer Douglas Mcgowan. He is also co-editing, with T Cooper, an anthology of original fiction, Written by the Losers: The People’s Fictional History of the United States, to be published by Akashic Books in Fall 2005.
