Maame Blue

“Chaotic, sexy, and binge-worthy as hell, Be Gay, Do Crime is an EVENT.”—Ruth Madievsky, author of All Night PharmacyA follow-up to their runaway success Peach Pit: Sixteen Stories of Unsavory Women, editors Molly Llewellyn and Kristel Buckley return with Be Gay, Do Crime, a celebration of queer chaos from an all-queer author lineup featuring Myriam Gurba, Emily Austin, Alissa Nutting, and Francesca EkwuyasiA trans woman makes increasingly frequent hoax calls to a business where she's had a negative experience, watching the consequences with perverse joy. A group of aging queers turns to bank robbery to stop the sale of their bungalow complex to a development company. As the president prepares to give a speech, two women lurk among the journalists, ready to shoot him. And an aspiring author takes to stealing items from strangers’ homes in a kind of cosmic redistribution each time one of her relationships fail. In sixteen brilliant, wild-eyed stories, Be Gay, Do Crime delivers a celebration and reckoning of why queer people turn to crime–unintentionally, as a means of survival, as protest, as rescue, or to right injustices big and small.

In love, as in war neither hero or villain is immediately obvious...especially when loving in London. Deeply romantic Ekuah's experience on the dating circuit has her feeling forlorn and adrift - a very classic 21st century London love story. Her on again - off again situationship with Dee; musician extraordinaire is more draining than she can bear, and when he once again makes a ghost of himself, she reaches her breaking point. Heartbroken, but determined, she channels her energy into searching for new validations and preoccupations, other than the man who keeps getting away. In comes a new lover in the form of poetry which dreamily moves her across nights in London, Venice, Accra and Paris and into the orbit of the enigmatic Jay Stanley. But what are the sweet words of a poet against a history of hard, bad, rough experiences in love? As poetry gives her new purpose and Jay promises different outcomes in love, Ekuah must decide if she is willing to trust in love again or let the past decide her future...

A powerful tale of womanhood, friendship, family secrets and the Black British experience, set between present-day England and mid-90s Ghana. On the cusp of thirty, Ghanaian Londoner Whitney Appiah was born with a special gift. The massage therapist can physically sense where her clients' trauma lies and heal them. But Whitney has no idea that she too is suffering. Tragic events from her youth have left a terrible, unseen mark. When a dangerous encounter with the man she's dating triggers a wave of fragmented recollections, Whitney embarks on a journey to reclaim her memories and the truth that is buried deep in her early childhood in Kumasi, Ghana. Spanning three decades, told through the viewpoints of Whitney, her aunts - Gloria and Aretha - and their house help - Maame Serwaa - The Rest of You explores what happens when we try to resolve the mysteries of our past.

A young woman living in London, Ekuah loves deeply and loves hard, yet with each romantic encounter she is left feeling increasingly unmoored and adrift. She struggles in her love for Dee Emeka, a gifted musician, who is both passionate and distant in the way he loves her back. Confirming her worst fears about the unstable foundation of their relationship, he suddenly disappears from her life. Heartbroken, she is left to pick up the pieces, while searching for new validations and preoccupations from others. But when, against a backdrop of enigmatic, poetic, nights in London, Venice, Accra and Paris, she finds an unexpected new love in the form of Jay Stanley, Ekuah re-focuses on her journey to meaningful love. She is determined to feel deeply again, but can she handle the vulnerability and forgiveness that comes with falling in love?

Psychotherapy is a collection of poems that explores the conscious, subconscious and unconscious processes of an ex-therapist and budding writer. Maame Blue takes the reader through the dark comedy of online dating with "Supermarket Sweep", the nostalgia of love long-since lost with "The Algorithm of Us" and the routine abnormalities that come with being a Londoner, via the poem "Delay". This collection is a salute and a farewell to therapy, with its intricacies, its burdens and its warmth.