Edited by Collins’s daughter, Nina Lorez Collins, the collection includes short stories, a fragment from an unfinished novel, diary entries, letters, plays, and two film scripts-this one, as well as the one that she wrote for “Losing Ground,” the only feature that she directed. The screenplay appears in a collection of Collins’s writings “ Notes from a Black Woman’s Diary,” which is coming out next Tuesday.

It’s a screenplay, titled “A Summer Diary,” by Kathleen Collins, and to read it is to experience an extraordinary creation that, due to calamitous circumstances, is missing only the finishing touch of actually being made into a film. Readers who enjoy this collection should also note Collins’s other collection of stories, titled Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? that was also published posthumously.The best work of cinema coming out in the next few days won’t be in theatres or even streaming. Her work is undeniably deserving of praise. Her writing is unflinchingly honest and perceptive, and the way that she describes the mundane is absolutely captivating. The beautifully articulated diary entries and letters are the shining stars in the book these touchingly real glimpses into Collins’s heart and mind suggest that she herself may be more interesting than the fiction she wrote. The book closes with a reproduction of the original script for Losing Ground, a movie that Collins wrote and directed in the 1980s. Another one-act play, “The Reading,” explores the racial conflict between two women in the waiting room of a psychic’s office.

One of the book’s most memorable plays, “Remembrance,” tells of how a young mother searches for God in the privacy of her small apartment bathroom.

Though brief, the three stories that open the book offer a powerful look at the complexity of relationships the love triangle in “Nina Simone” is the most fascinating. Notes From a Black Woman’s Diary has a little bit of everything: short stories, novel excerpts, diary entries, letters, plays, and screenplays. Although Kathleen Collins died from cancer over thirty years ago, her work lives on in this interesting collection of previously unpublished works, edited by her daughter, Nina Lorez Collins.

Kathleen collins short stories