{"id":26100,"date":"2025-09-16T16:32:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T16:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/26100\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T16:32:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T16:32:09","slug":"baltimore-author-lawrence-burneys-no-sense-in-wishing-praised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/26100\/","title":{"rendered":"Baltimore author Lawrence Burney\u2019s \u2018No Sense in Wishing\u2019 praised"},"content":{"rendered":"

At 35, Baltimore native Lawrence Burney has risen to literary prominence as an incisive culture writer \u2014 telling readers why they need to pay attention to music artists from Maryland and around the world.<\/p>\n

For his debut book, however, Burney turned inward, dissecting his relationship to music through the lens of family, growing up in East Baltimore and pursuing his own writing dreams. <\/p>\n

The result is \u201cNo Sense in Wishing,\u201d a collection of essays that uses Gil Scott-Heron, crab feasts and Baltimore rappers as jumping-off points for poignant reflection. The book, since its July 8 release, has earned a coveted Kirkus starred review<\/a> and elevated Burney\u2019s profile even more.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m super appreciative of everything that\u2019s happening so far because it\u2019s no guarantees,\u201d Burney said. \u201dYou just make something, you put it out into the world and you wait to see what the response is going to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burney, who began chronicling Baltimore\u2019s music scene more than a decade ago with his True Laurels<\/a> zine, will join me in the newsroom\u2019s downtown office on Wednesday for a discussion about \u201cNo Sense in Wishing,\u201d the latest pick for The Banner\u2019s Book Club<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Before then, Burney \u2014 a former Banner arts and culture reporter<\/a> with bylines in New York magazine, GQ, Pitchfork and others \u2014 answered questions about his writing, fatherhood and more. This interview has been edited and condensed.<\/p>\n

I think I still have one of the first issues of True Laurels. How did the autonomy of creating your own zine inform your approach to writing a more traditional book? <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if there\u2019s a clean transition from one to the next, but I do think starting off with a zine, with a blog, gave me the confidence to lean into the stories that I deemed \u2014 I don\u2019t want to say worthy, but deserving rather. I feel like if you come up in a more traditional media route, there\u2019s a lot of push and pull with an editor or some kind of supervisor. I had those experiences, too, but I always had my own thing to lean back on. <\/p>\n

Even if I was to pitch something to [Baltimore] City Paper back then or like Vice or XXL magazine, if they were to say no, I always knew that I had my own thing where I could express and cover what I felt like needed to be covered. <\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t really look at it this way at the time, but that was pretty liberating \u2014 being able to take control of the steering wheel and just do it the way I wanted to do it.<\/p>\n

\"No<\/p>\n

No Sense in Wishing by Lawrence Burney <\/p>\n

I love \u201cThe Exchange,\u201d<\/a> your essay about trading music and TV recommendations with your daughter. How old is she now? <\/p>\n

She\u2019ll be 15 in a month. <\/p>\n

You were the kid putting friends onto new music. How would you describe her approach to music? <\/p>\n

I can tell she really loves music. She constantly has earphones on. When she\u2019s with me, she\u2019s in her room, blasting music off of the speaker. I can\u2019t say what her role is within her friend group. I don\u2019t know if she\u2019s putting people onto anything necessarily. I just know when she\u2019s with me, I\u2019m always entertained by her love for older music. But her version of older music is just like, the 2000s. So she\u2019ll be listening to Ashanti or Fantasia or Lloyd or Musiq Soulchild. And she takes pride in knowing music from the past, but it\u2019s just funny because what she perceives as old-school music is the music that was out when I was in middle school or high school.<\/p>\n

Did writing the book change your perception or your relationship to Baltimore at all? <\/p>\n

No, I wouldn\u2019t say so. Honestly, I didn\u2019t find out a lot of new information about Baltimore while I was writing the book. I figured, to the outside world, the non-Baltimore world, this information would be valuable \u2014 or at least the context would be valuable to understand my story, but probably a lot of other people\u2019s stories who are from here or spent significant time here.<\/p>\n

Being done with the book now, it\u2019s making me want to dig deeper into the history of Baltimore or certain time periods within the region because I just really enjoy doing research. That\u2019s probably my favorite thing to do during the writing process.<\/p>\n

What are you working on next?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m working on a second book. I just shared the proposal with my agent. We\u2019re working on it right now and shopping it up. And hopefully things go well with that when I take it to my editor. So I\u2019m focusing on that and really just wanting to slow down and get a solid routine down so I can focus on writing and, you know, doing the high school dad thing.<\/p>\n

Any details you can give about the proposal?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s nonfiction. The most I would say now is it\u2019s like a narrative history, not essays. It\u2019s a topic that\u2019s special to me, and I\u2019m excited to dig in and get deeper into the research. But I\u2019ll just say that for now. I don\u2019t want to jinx anything.<\/p>\n