Avery Irons’ debut novel Belonging to the Air was published by the University Press of Kentucky on February 3, 2026.
The novel follows Honest “Bird” Bennett, a young Black girl growing up in Bennettsville, Illinois, a freedmen’s town founded by her great-grandfather. As Bird comes of age, she reckons with turbulence at home and falls in love with a childhood friend. As an adult she rejects a life of self-denial, moves to Harlem, and is eventually summoned back to Bennettsville to confront her kin and her past. Among the cast are a blind matriarch, women who heal with herbs, and queer lovers.
Irons was born and raised in central Illinois. Her novella Glass Men won Big Fiction Magazine’s Novella Prize, and her short fiction has appeared in Sinister Wisdom and the African American Review.
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Featured image: Belonging to the Air book cover by Avery Irons. Publisher: University Press of Kentucky.
