He had not yet finished his novel, but he knew it would deal with water as a central theme, so he asked Rawles - somewhat shyly, in her telling - whether she might be interested in trying her hand at the cover art.īook covers are typically created by in-house designers, but Coates said he wanted Rawles to “read the work, feel a type of way and then create something,” which is to say, be inspired rather than directed by him or his work. In late 2017, during a visit to Rawles’s studio in Los Angeles, Coates saw some of her recent work: photo-like paintings of black women, men and children floating or swimming in a pool. The image, painted by the artist Calida Garcia Rawles, depicts a black man submerged in water, a reflection of both a plot point in the book as well as Rawles’ previous work, in which she said she’s combined the “meditative” quality of water to reckon with black trauma. Ta-Nehisi Coates’s first novel, “The Water Dancer,” will be published in September by One World, an imprint of Random House, and now, it has a cover.
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