She’s a provocative slam queen, a former soap-opera writer, and an outspoken critic who doesn’t shy away from controversy (notably, she slammed the highly regarded Maya Angelou in a 2002 review of A Song Flung Up to Heaven ). In her new collection, Jazz & Twelve O’Clock Tales, Coleman chocks 13 short stories full of drama—arguably melodrama—played out by victims, has-beens, and down-on-their-lucks in an examination of what people look like in pain.