Part 88 (1/2)
CONNIE BRISCOE is the author of P.G. County, Sisters & Lovers, Big Girls Don't Cry, and A Long Way from Home. She is the former managing editor of the American Annals of the Deaf at Gallaudet University and has been hearing-impaired for most of her adult life. She lives in Ellicott City, Maryland.
LORI BRYANT-WOOLRIDGE, the author of the novel Read Between the Lies, is a veteran of the television broadcasting business. She spent seven years at ABC and has worked at PBS and Black Entertainment Television. She has won an Emmy Award for Individual Achievement in Writing.
CRIS BURKS earned her MFA in creative writing at Columbia College in Chicago, where she taught fiction writing for several years. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in several literary publications, including Shooting Star Review and Short Fiction by Women. She lives in Sacramento, California, and is the author of SilkyDreamGirl.
BEBE MOORE CAMPBELL is the author of three acclaimed novels: Your Blues Ain't Like Mine, which won an NAACP Image Award for Literature, What You Owe Me, and the New York Times bestsellers Brothers and Sisters and Singing in the Comeback Choir. She lives in Los Angeles.
LORENE CARY is the author of Black Ice, a memoir, and the novels Pride and The Price of a Child. She teaches writing at the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Philadelphia with her husband and two children.
VERONICA CHAMBERS, a former editor at The New York Times Magazine is the author of the memoir Mama's Girl. Currently, Veronica is a cultural writer for Newsweek. She is a frequent contributor to both The New York Times Book Review and the Los Angeles Times Book Review, and author of a book about filmmaker John Singleton, Poetic Justice: Filmmaking in South Central. She is also the author of two children's books, Amistad Rising: The Battle for Freedom and Marisol and Magdalena. She is in the early stages of other fiction projects.
MAXINE CLAIR is the author of the novel October Suite and Rattlebone, a collection of short stories, which won the Chicago Tribune's Heartland Prize for fiction, among other awards. She is also a Guggenheim Fellow.
PEARL CLEAGE is the author of the novels I Wish I Had a Red Dress and What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day as well as Mad at Miles: A Black Woman's Guide to Truth and Deals with the Devil and Other Reasons to Riot. She is an accomplished playwright and a cofounder of the literary magazine Catalyst. Ms. Cleage lives in Atlanta with her husband.
J. CALIFORNIA COOPER is the author of The Future Has a Past and five other collections of short stories, including Homemade Love, winner of the 1989 American Book Award, and the novels The Wake of the Wind, Family, and In Search of Satisfaction. She lives in northern California.
DANA CRUM is a journalist and poet who lives in Harlem. Crum has built an impressive resume as a freelance writer. Since getting his first big break in the urban magazine The Source, Crum has successfully made a name for himself in both commercial and underground syndication.
EDWIDGE DANTICAT is the author of After the Dance and two novels, The Farming of Bones and Breath, Eyes, Memory. Krik? Krak!, her collection of stories, was nominated for a National Book Award. Critical acclaim and awards for her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, included a Granta Regional Award for the Best Young American Novelists, a Pushcart Prize, and fiction awards from Essence and Seventeen magazines.
R. ERICA DOYLE 's fiction has appeared in Blithe House Quarterly. She has published poems and articles in Callalloo, Ms., Best American Poetry 2001, and Black Issues Book Review, among other venues.
TANANARIVE DUE is the author of the novels The Living Blood, The Black Rose, My Soul to Keep, and The Between. Freedom in the Family, a book written with her mother, Patricia Stephens Due, will be published in 2003. Due has a BS in journalism from Northwestern University and an MA in English literature from the University of Leeds, England, where she specialized in Nigerian literature as a Rotary Foundation Scholar.
DAVID ANTHONY DURHAM is the author of Gabriel's Story and A Walk Through Darkness. He was born in New York City and spent his formative years in Trinidad, his parents' homeland. He received a BA and MFA from the University of Maryland and won the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Fiction Award in 1992. Durham, along with his wife and children, divides his time between Scotland and the United States.
PATRICIA ELAM is the author of Breathing Room. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in The Was.h.i.+ngton Post, Essence, Emerge, Newsday, and in anthologies such as Fathers' Songs and New Stories from the South. A winner of the O. Henry Award, she has been a commentator for National Public Radio, NBC News, CNN, and the BBC. She lives in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.
PERCIVAL EVERETT is a professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of fourteen books, including Glyph, Frenzy, Watershed, and Suder. He lives in Los Angeles.
ROBERT FLEMING, a former award-winning reporter at the New York Daily News, is the author of The Wisdom Of The Elders, The African American Writer's Handbook, Havoc After Dark: Tales of Terror, and the editor of After Hours: A Collection of Erotic Writing by Black Men. His poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared in numerous periodicals and books, such as Brotherman, UpSouth, Sacred Fire, Brown Sugar, and Dark Matter. He lives in New York City.
ARTHUR FLOWERS is the author of two novels, De Mojo Blues and Another Good Loving Blues. He is a cofounder of the New Renaissance Writers Guild.
THOMAS GLAVE is the author of Whose Song? And Other Stories. Voted a ”Writer on the Verge” in June 2000's the Village Voice Literary Supplement, he has won many writing awards, among them the prestigious O. Henry Prize. He is only the second gay black writer, after James Baldwin, to claim that honor. A 1993 honors graduate of Bowdoin College and a graduate of Brown University, he traveled as a Fulbright Scholar in 199899 to Jamaica, where he studied Jamaican historiography and Jamaican-Caribbean intellectual and literary traditions. Glave has been published and praised in many prestigious literary journals and his work has appeared in various anthologies. Born in the Bronx, New York, he was raised there and in Kingston, Jamaica. He is a.s.sistant professor of English at the State University of New York, Binghamton.
MARITA GOLDEN is the author of nine works of fiction and nonfiction, including her memoir, Migrations of the Heart, and the bestselling books Long Distance Life and Saving Our Sons. Her most recent novel is The Edge of Heaven. Marita Golden serves as president of the Hurston/Wright Foundation.
JEWELLE GOMEZ is an activist, teacher, arts administrator, and literary critic. A transplanted Bostonian, she has lived in New York for twenty years, most recently in Brooklyn. She is the author of The Gilda Stories.
E. LYNN HARRIS is a former IBM computer sales executive and a graduate of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He is the author of eight previous novels: A Love of My Own, Any Way the Wind Blows, Not a Day Goes By, Abide with Me, If This World Were Mine, This Too Shall Pa.s.s, Just as I Am, and Invisible Life. In 1996 and 2002 Just as I Am and Any Way the Wind Blows were named Novel of the Year by the Blackboard African American Bestsellers, Inc. If This World Were Mine won the James Baldwin Award for Literary Excellence. In 2000 and 2001 Harris was named one of the fifty-five ”Most Intriguing African Americans” by Ebony and inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame. In 2002, Harris was included in Savoy magazine's ”100 Leaders and Heroes in Black America.” Harris divides his time between New York City and Atlanta, Georgia.
DAVID HAYNES is the author of a number of books including All American Dream Dolls, Somebody Else's Mama, and Right By My Side, which was a winner in the 1992 Minnesota Voices Project and was selected by the American Library a.s.sociation as one of 1994's best books for young adults. Two of Haynes's stories have been recorded for the National Public Radio series Selected Shorts. In 1996 Haynes was named by Granta magazine as one of the best young American novelists. Haynes is at work on his next novel, The Majordomo's Daughter.
RAVI HOWARD is a graduate of the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. A native of Montgomery, Alabama, Ravi's winning story Like Trees, Walking was inspired by the 1981 lynching of Michael Donald by the Ku Klux Klan. Howard is at work on the novel Like Trees Walking.
BRIAN KEITH JACKSON is the author of The Queen of Harlem, Walking Through Mirrors, and The View from Here. Jackson has received fellows.h.i.+ps from Art Matters, the Jerome Foundation, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. The View from Here won the American Library a.s.sociation Literary Award for First Fiction from the Black Caucus of America. Jackson lives in Harlem.
MITCh.e.l.l JACKSON is a native or Portland, Oregon. He received a BS in Speech Communications and an MA in creative writing from Portland State University. Jackson is currently living in New York City, freelance writing and attending New York University's MFA program.
SANDRA JACKSON-OPOKU is the author of Hot Johnny and The River Where Blood Is Born, which won the Black Caucus of the American Library a.s.sociation Award for Fiction in 1998. Jackson-Opoku has received several honors and awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellows.h.i.+p and two Gwendolyn Brooks Poet Laureate Awards.
KENJI JASPER is the author of the novels Dakota Grand and Dark. His work has appeared in Vibe, Essence, The Source, and other publications. A native of Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., and a graduate of Morehouse College, he now lives in Brooklyn.
YOLANDA JOE is the author of the novels This Just In, Bebe's By Golly Wow, He Say, She Say, and Falling Leaves of Ivy. She also writes mysteries under the name Ardella Garland. Joe is a native of Chicago and received her MS from the Columbia School of Journalism in New York. After returning to Chicago, she began working in news radio for CBS, then switched to television news and worked as a writer/producer for a decade before beginning a full-time writing career.
MAT JOHNSON is the author of Drop. He was a recipient of the Thomas J. Watson Fellows.h.i.+p, and received his MFA from Columbia University. He is currently at work on his second novel, set in Harlem where he lives.
R.M. JOHNSON is the author of the novels Father Found and The Harris Men. He lives in Chicago.
EDWARD P. JONES 's debut collection of short stories Lost in the City: Stories was nominated for the National Book Award in 1992 and won the PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award for best first fiction.