Late-night visits to adult bookstores. Coming out shows on college campuses. Climbing the corporate ladders while never forgetting your roots. The love and support of sisters/lovers/friends.
La Toya Hankins seeks to capture the lives of the new Southern women in her novels, SBF Seeking… and K-Rho: The Sweet Taste of Sisterhood. Dedicated to capturing the experiences of women’ voices often left unheard in contemporary fiction, Hankins takes the reader to the cities and towns of her native North Carolina and showcases the experiences of living for one self instead of up to the expectations of others.
Kiara, Donna, Yvette, Yolanda, Danita, and Gloria are more than just characters. They are the sisters, sorors, daughters, and friends we all have in our lives.
Have you found what you are looking for, and do you have a sisterhood that supersedes sexuality? Come visit the word of Toya and find yourself among the pages.
One of the distinguishing features of my writing is that I always set my stories in my home state of North Carolina. Since publishing my first novel in 2012, I have chosen various settings—ranging from bustling cities and college campuses to quaint small towns—to celebrate my interpretation of Southern Sisterhood.
I invite all those curious about the lives and loves of the Southern Sorority women who come to life through my work to enjoy a little taste of my writing, which I call #FirstFiveFridays. I will share the first five lines of one of my short stories every First Friday of the month. To learn more, subscribe to my newsletter.Enjoy
While I was born in Washington, D.C., more than five decades ago, home will always be the small Southern town of Southport, NC. The city, with a population of under 5,000 people, is renowned for being the setting of numerous Hollywood movies and for serving some of the finest seafood you will ever experience. But its biggest claim to fame is being North Carolina’s official Independence Day Celebration. The designation awarded to the city in 1972 brings thousands of visitors to the town for several days of events, including fireworks, vendors, and, of course, good food.
It is within the setting of the Fourth of July festival that my partner’s favorite story of mine takes place. Heat Wave: Southport is a sexy and sultry imagining of what happens when a dutiful daughter comes home to help with her family’s food truck and encounters a long-lost classmate. The two spend the day catching up and end up in the city’s library after hours. Let’s say the two do more than test their knowledge of the Dewey Decimal system. To learn what happens, Heat Wave: Southport is available for purchase at https://www.jms-books.com/la-toya-hankins-c-224_349/
Heat Wave: Southport
Zora knew she should have said no when her mom asked her to come home for the Fourth of July. If I had stuck to my guns, this dark chocolate cutie could have been in Charlotte enjoying a cookout and making eyes at the currently unattached graduate student next door, she thought, wiping her forehead with the back of her plastic-gloved hand. Instead, she was selling shrimp burgers and French fries in a hot ass food truck back in the town she had called home for the majority of her life. Damn that sense of family loyalty.
“I’m so glad you decided to come down and help out. Your father would never say it, but it means so much to him that you want to help promote the restaurant. It’s always so much fun when the family works together and we rarely see you anymore since you moved so far away for your job,” her mother said, bustling around the cramped space like an over-caffeinated humming bee.
Zora took in her current situation. The sizzle of grease, the languid whirl of an ineffective fan, and the chatter of the crowd building outside the bright robin blue and white kitchen on wheels came close to drowning her mother’s Jamaican lilt. Yep, this is how I wanted to spend my day off, she thought to herself.
One of the hallmarks of my writing is that I always center my stories in my home state of North Carolina. Since publishing my first novel in 2012, I have chosen settings of metropolises, college campuses, and small towns to celebrate my concept of Southern Sisterhood.
I invite all those curious about the lives and loves of the Southern Sorority women who come to life through my work to enjoy a little taste of my writing, which I call #FirstFiveFridays. I will share the first five lines of one of my short stories every First Friday of the month. To learn more, subscribe to my newsletter.Enjoy
The dream should have been a tip-off nothing was going to go the way I planned. It was always the same; me slipping on my wedding dress, the shiny satin slipping down my skin as Yolanda, my twin sister and maid of honor, zipped and buttoned. I could hear her smoke-tinged voice in my ear, “Yvette, I told you to lay off those BBQ sandwiches or else get a better girdle.”
My mom’s heels tapping out an impatient song as she walked back and forth in the kitchen making sure everything that should be there was not here and vice versa.
Then the dream would change; my uncle Ross and I standing in the foyer of Friendship Missionary Baptist church listening to the wedding march and each other’s breathing
One of the hallmarks of my writing is that I always center my stories in my home state of North Carolina. Since publishing my first novel in 2012, I have selected settings of metropolitans, college campuses, and small towns to celebrate my idea about Southern Sisterhood.
I invite all those curious about the lives and loves of the Southern Sorority women who come to life through my work to enjoy a little taste of my writing, which I call #FirstFiveFridays. I will share the first five lines of one of my short stories every First Friday of the month. To learn more, subscribe to my newsletter.Enjoy
Few things in life irked Nona Essex’s soul more than people who didn’t know how to shut up and have a good time. That truth pulsated in her brain as she sat in a plum and platinum-decorated ballroom serenaded by electronic swing music.
Less than an hour earlier, she witnessed the joyous nuptials of one of her favorite sorority sisters. The twilight beach ceremony under a clear September sky left her wanting to hug and kiss everyone who crossed her path.
It was only a short drive from the beach to a reception in downtown Wilmington filled with those drunk on love and a variety of liquid pleasure.
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