Jabari Asim is the editor-in-chief
of Crisis magazine, a preeminent journal
of politics, ideas and culture published by the
NAACP and founded by W.E.B. Du Bois in 1910. His
most recent book is The N Word: Who Can Say It,
Who Shouldn’t, And Why. Jabari spent 11 years
at the Washington Post, where he served as deputy
editor of the book review section. For three years
he also wrote a syndicated column on political and
social issues for the Post. He is the editor of
Not Guilty: Twelve Black Men Speak Out on the Law,
Justice and Life, published in November 2001.
He is a frequent public speaker
and commentator who has appeared on The Today Show,
The Colbert Report, Hannity & Colmes, the Tavis
Smiley Show, the Diane Rehm show and countless other
programs. He has lectured at many of the nation’s
finest universities, including Northwestern University,
Syracuse University and the University of Florida.
The Road To Freedom, his first novel for young readers,
was published in 2000. His other children’s books
include Whose Toes Are Those, Whose Knees Are These,
and Daddy Goes to Work. His first novel for adults,
“Nappy Days,” has been acquired by Doubleday/Harlem
Moon.
bibliographical
information
Esther Armah
is an award-winning international journalist who
has worked in the UK, US and Africa in print, radio
and television. She has written for a number of
publications including Essence magazine in the US,
and The Guardian newspaper in London. She is also
an author, play-write and radio host who moved from
London to New York. Her first book is Can I Be Me?
an exploration of dual Ghanaian and British identity,
the legacy of family trauma, addiction to white
approval and the shaping of all that as a mainstream
journalist in the prestigious institution of the
BBC where she was an investigative reporter, a radio
host, and a documentary maker., and worked in front
of and behind the camera - often the only black
presence in a white environment. Her first book
was adapted into a one woman show which played to
audiences at the Museum of the City of New York;
her second play Forgive Me? hits the stage in June.
Esther describes herself as a writer
and a literary entrepreneur; passionate about fusing
literary values with technology, film and drama
to creatively market writer’s work to a global
audience. Her New York and London based company,
Centric Productions, specializes in creative media
and marketing. It produces and owns ‘Off The
Page’ on WBAI 99.5FM, a one hour radio talk
show about the world of books and can be watched
on the internet via a website with an established
international demographic in the US, UK, Norway,
France, South Africa, British Virgin Islands and
Ghana. You can hear Esther three mornings a week
as the radio host of Wake Up Call, WBAI 99.5FM.
She is currently writing her second book and her
third play.
bibliographical
information
asha bandele is an award
winning poet, author and journalist. Her best selling
memoir, The Prisoner's Wife, is being
followed up next year with her 5th book, Something
Like Beautiful (Bloomsbury, Feb 2009) a personal
narrative about Black women, single parenting and
depression. Asha published Daughter: A Novel
in January 2004 and two volumes of poetry called
The Subtle Art of Breathing (2005) and Absence
in the Palms of My Hands: & Other Poems (1996).
She served as features editor and writer for Essence
magazine and has been a Revson Fellow at
Columbia University. Asha
lives in Brooklyn with her little girl, Nisa.
bibliographical
information
Amiri Baraka , poet and
literary author and activist is the author of over
40 books of essays, poems, drama, and music history
and criticism and has recited poetry and lectured
on cultural and political issues extensively in
the USA, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe. His
book of short stories, Tales of the Out and
the Gone (Akashic Books) was published in late
2006. Read an excerpt at http://www.akashicbooks.com/talesoftheoutexcerpt.htm
He published his first volume of
poetry, Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note,
in 1961. Blues People: Negro Music in White
America, still regarded as the seminal work
on Afro-American music and culture. He also edited
The Moderns: An Anthology of New Writing in America
were published in 1963. His reputation as a playwright
was established with the production of Dutchman
at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York on March
24, 1964. The controversial play subsequently won
an Obie Award (for "best off-Broadway play")
and was made into a film
In 1965, Jones moved
to Harlem, where he founded the Black Arts Repertory
Theatre/School. The BARTS lasted only one year but
had a lasting influence on the direction of Afro
American Arts. In 1965, he and his wife Amina founded
the Committee for Unified Newark and the Congress
of Afrikan People which led the election of Ken
Gibson as the first Black Mayor of a major northeastern
city spearheaded by the 1972 Gary (IN) Convention.
In 1968, he co-edited Black Fire: An Anthology
of Afro-American Writing with Larry Neal.
He and his wife,
Amina Baraka, edited The Music (Meditations
of Jazz & Blues (Morrow) Confirmation: An
Anthology of African-American Women, which won
an American Book Award from the Before Columbus
Foundation. The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri
Baraka was published in 1984. His publications
also include Y’s/Why’s/Wise (3rd
World 1992) Funk Lore (Littoral 1993), Eulogies,
(Marsilio, 94,) Transbluesency, (Marsilio
1996), Somebody Blew Up America & Other Poems
(Nehesi 2002).
Amiri’s numerous
literary honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim
Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts,
the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Rockefeller Foundation
Award for Drama, the Langston Hughes Award from
The City College of New York, and a lifetime achievement
award from the Before Columbus Foundation. He was
inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters
in 1995. In 1994, he retired as Professor of Africana
Studies at the State University of New York in Stony
Brook, and in 2002 was named Poet Laureate of New
Jersey and Newark Public Schools. In January 2007,
his award-winning, one-act play, Dutchman,
was revived at the new Cherry Lane Theatre in New
York and received critical acclaim and international
attention.
bibliographical
information
Dr. Lindamichellebaron
is an educator, author, poet, entrepreneur, inspirational
speaker, and performing artist who has touched audiences
internationally with her motivational style, interactive
speeches, and engaging presentations. She interacts
with audience members of all ages, without regard
to gender and other social differences, taking them
on a journey without boundaries. Dr. Baron is currently
an Assistant Professor in the Department of Teacher
Education at York College of the City University
of New York (CUNY). She is the founder and president
of the 20-plus year old publishing and educational
consulting company, Harlin Jacque Publications.
Dr. Baron has received numerous awards and honors.
She lives in Hempstead, New York and was honored
with the official designation as Village Griot (storyteller).
For more information visit www.lindamichellebaron.com.
bibliographical
information
Patrik Henry
Bass is the co-author of In Our Own Image:
Treasured African-American Traditions, Journeys,
and Icons, and books editor for Essence magazine.
His work has appeared in numerous publications,
including The New York Times, The Washington Post,
and Entertainment Weekly.
bibliographical
information
Fred Beauford founded
Black Creation, Neworld Review and served
for eight years as the editor of Crisis magazine.
He is the author of five novels including The
Year Jerry Garcia Died and The King
of Macy’s. His essays are also collected
in five additional books. Beauford is currently
publisher of Morton Books. He has taught at The
University of Southern California, UC Berkeley,
N.Y.U. and SUNY Old Westbury. Fred Beauford has
been called the thinking
man's novelist. He has been on a thoughtful
hunt for the true meaning of what it means to be
an American in his previous books. In The Hard
Luck Novel, he is true to form in this interesting,
fast moving provocative urban fable. He currently
divides his year between Los Angeles and New York
City.
bibliographical
information
Tonya Bolden is an award-winning
author of more than twenty books for the young.
They include The Champ: The Story of Muhammad
Ali, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie (a Louisiana
Young Readers’ Choice Award Honor and a Booklist
Top 10 Youth Sports Book) and Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century
American Girl (a Coretta Scott King Honor Book,
YALSA Best Book for Young Adults, ALSC Notable Children’s
Book, CCBC Best Book of the Year, New York Public
Library Book for the Teen Age, NAPPA Gold Award
winner, and a James Madison Book Award winner.)
National Book Award Winner and MacArthur Fellow
Charles Johnson hailed Bolden’s M.L.K: Journey
of a King as “an elegant, heartfelt, thought-provoking
homage to one of the greatest Americans of all time.”
What’s more, M.L.K. received the 2008 Orbis
Pictus Award from the National Council of Teachers
of English. Bolden’s latest book George Washington
Carver, illustrated with archival photographs,
celebrates a true original—someone who was so much
more than the “Peanut Man.” As Booklist remarked
in its starred review, “Bolden covers subtleties
that simpler treatments tend to bypass.” History
is clearly Bolden’s passion. She strongly believes
that there is “Power in the past.”
bibliographical
information
Roger Bonair-Agard is
a native of Trinidad and Tobago,
a Cave Canem fellow, and the author of "Tarnish
and Masquerade" (Cypher Books, 2006).
He is the co-founder and Artistic Director of the
louderARTS Project, a two-time National Poetry Slam
Champion and the author of the critically acclaimed
one man show MASQUERADE: Calypso and Home.
He teaches and performs throughout the world. .
bibliographical
information
Herb Boyd an awarding winning
journalist, activist and author who has published
eighteen books and countless articles for national
magazines and newspapers including the Amsterdam
News, The Black Scholar, the Network Journal,
the Final Call, and Neworld. His most
recent book is Baldwin's Harlem, a Biography
of James Baldwin. Brotherman—The Odyssey
of Black Men in America—An Anthology (One World/Ballantine,
1995), co-edited with Robert Allen of the Black
Scholar journal, won the American Book Award
for nonfiction. In 1999, Boyd won three first place
awards from the New York Association of Black Journalists
for his articles published in the Amsterdam News.
He teaches at the College of New Rochelle in the
Bronx and at City College New York, and is also
the managing editor of The Black World Today, www.tbwt.org,
and online news service.
Valerie Boyd is
the author of Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of
Zora Neale Hurston (Scribner 2003), the critically
acclaimed biography of the novelist and anthropologist.
An accomplished journalist and cultural critic,
Boyd is the former arts editor at The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, and she has been published
in numerous anthologies, magazines and newspapers.
bibliographical
information
Thomas Bradshaw’s play entitled
Purity was produced at Performance Space
122 in January 2007 and his plays Strom Thurmond
Is Not A Racist and Cleansed were produced
on a double bill at The Brick Theatre in February
‘07. His plays Prophet, Strom Thurmond
Is Not A Racist, Cleansed, and Purity
are all published by Samuel French, Inc. Strom/Cleansed
were nominated for Outstanding Original Full
Length Script by the 2007 New York Innovative Theater
Awards. He has been featured as one of Time Out
New York’s ten playwrights to watch, as one
of Paper Magazine’s 2006 Beautiful
People, and Best Provocative Playwright by the Village
Voice in 2007. His play entitled Prophet
was presented at P.S. 122 in December 2005.
Strom Thurmond Is Not A Racist won
The American Theater Coop’s 2005 National Playwriting
Contest. His was a fellow at New York Theater Workshop
in 06-07’ and is now a Usual Suspect. Cleansed
will also be published in Plays and Playwrights
2008. He has been a member of Soho Rep’s writer/Director
lab as well as Lincoln Center’s. He performed in
the premiere of Richard Maxwell’s The End Of
Reality at The Kitchen in January 2006 and he
performed in Young Jean Lee’s Pullman, WA
at P.S. 122 in March 2005.
bibliographical
information
Dr. Jacqueline Brice-Finch,
Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Coppin
State University, is also a Professor of Caribbean
and African American Literature. She has lectured
in the United States, the Caribbean, Colombia, France,
and Turkey on the subjects of African American literature,
Caribbean literature, and multiculturalism.
Dr. Brice-Finch is an honors graduate
of Howard University with a B. A. degree in English
and French. She received her M. A. degree in Literature
from Indiana University, Bloomington campus and
her Ph. D. degree in English Language and Literature
from the University of Maryland. In 1995, Dr. Brice-Finch
co-founded the Association of Caribbean
Women Writers and Scholars. In 1998 she became
the publisher of MaComère, its international
refereed journal devoted to the scholarly studies
and creative works by and about Caribbean women
in the Americas, Europe, and the Caribbean diaspora.
She served as Publications Editor of ACWWS from
1996 to 2004. Submissions are considered for this
annual publication in English, French, and Spanish.
Dr. Brice-Finch co-edited Get
It Together: Readings about African American Life,
a collection including essays about important issues
that have impacted the African American community:
racism, language, sports, justice, images, family,
and spirituality.
bibliographical
information
Regina Brooks founder and
President of Serendipity Literary Agency LLC, has
over a decade of experience in senior positions
at major publishing houses including John Wiley
& Sons Inc. and the McGraw-Hill Companies.
She is a graduate of the Howard University Publishing
Institute in Washington DC. Prior to her publishing
career she worked as an aerospace engineer for NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, and
made history as the first African American woman
to receive a Bachelors of Science Degree in Aerospace
Engineering from the Ohio State University.
bibliographical
information
Gloria J. Browne-Marshall
is an Associate Professor at John Jay College of
Criminal Justice (CUNY) and the Graduate Center
where she teaches Constitutional Law, Race and the
Law, and Evidence. She is the author of the book Race,
Law, and American Society: 1607 to Present
published by Routledge. With a foreword by Derrick
Bell and remarks by Cornel West, Race, Law, and
American Society: 1607 to Present provides
the reader with an accessible historical overview
of the fight for justice by focusing on topics of
education, voting rights, property rights, criminal
justice, the military, and internationalism from
the colonial period to present. In Race, Law,
and American Society, she places current issues
of racial in-justice in historical context. Her
first book The Constitution: Major Cases and
Conflicts is
published by Pearson
and connects major events with critical cases of
U.S. Constitutional Law. Gloria
is an award-winning playwright produced
in New York City, Brooklyn, Chicago, Pittsburgh,
and Milwaukee. Her plays include My Juilliard, Jeanine, Waverly
Place, A Waltz Through Dark Places, and
Killing Me Softly.. She attended the MFA
playwright program at Sarah Lawrence College as
well as the playwright programs at Freedom Repertory
Theater in Philadelphia and the Walnut Street Theater.
She is a member of PEN American Center.
bibliographical
information
Kassahun Checole, publisher
of Africa World Press was born in Eritrea and came
to the United States to study. He received his higher
education at the State University of New York (SUNY)
Binghamton with a specialization in political economy
and development. He later taught at several colleges
including Rutgers University in New Jersey and El
Colegio de Mexico in Mexico-City. Having been haunted
for several years by inadequate publishing outlets
for Africa, he decided about 22 years ago to do
something about it. Africa World Press now publishes
about 130 books every year with offices in the US,
London, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Ghana.
bibliographical
information
William Jelani Cobb is an
Associate Professor of History at Spelman. He specializes
in post-Civil War African American history, 20th
century American politics and the history of the
Cold War. He is also a contributing writer for Essence
magazine, an essayist and fiction writer. Cobb
is the author of To The Break of Dawn: A Freestyle
on the Hip Hop Aesthetic (NYU Press 2007) as
well as The Devil & Dave Chappelle: And Other
Essays (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2007) and
The Essential Harold Cruse: A Reader.
bibliographical
information
Ron Daniels, a veteran social,
political and scholar activist, is currently president
of the Institute for the Black World. Dr. Ron Daniels
was an independent candidate for President of the
United States in 1992. He served as Executive Director
of the National Rainbow Coalition in 1987 and Southern
Regional Coordinator and Deputy Campaign Manager
for the Jesse Jackson for President Campaign in
1988.is
currently a Distinguished Lecturer at York College,
CUNY.
bibliographical
information
Dawn Davis is presently
an editor at Harper Collins Publishers in New York
City. She is the editor of the Pulitzer Prize award
winning novel, The Known World and the executive
editor of Amistad. She has appeared at publishing
forums around the country and has been nominated
and awarded for her work in the publishing industry.
bibliographical
information
Thulani Davis is a journalist,
novelist, playwright and screenwriter. Her newest
book, My Confederate Kinfolk is a memoir
exploring her family’s black and white roots in
America during and after the Civil War. Her other
works include two novels, 1959 and Maker
of Saints, several plays and the scripts for
the films Paid in Full and Maker of Saints
(being shot this year). She has also written several
award-winning PBS documentaries.
As a journalist she has been both
a Staff Writer and Senior Editor at the Village
Voice and has written for an array of national publications
including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times
Book Review, Washington Post Book World, New York
Newsday, The Nation, Quarterly Black Review, Black
Issues Book Review, American Film, Emerge, Ms and
others.
Davis was the first woman to win
a Grammy Award in the liner notes category and was
nominated for another. She was educated at Barnard
College, the University of Pennsylvania and in 2003
received a Revson Fellowship on the Future of New
York City at Columbia University. She has taught
in NYU’s Department of Dramatic Writing. Davis and
is known for her wide range of interests and passionate
engagement with a number of genres.
bibliographical
information
Angela P. Dodson is a free
lance editor, writer and consultant. She spends
most of her time editing and ghost writing books.
Angela is also currently senior editor of NeWorld
Review, a literary magazine and blog, www.theneworldreview.blog.com
and an online editor for DIVERSE Issues in Higher
Education, www.diverseeducation.com.
She is the former executive editor of Black Issues
Book Review and has been a journalist for more
than 30 years. Dodson has also been a writer and
editor for various other magazines, including Essence
and Heart and Soul, and newspapers, including
the Washington Star and The New York Times,
where she was an editor for 12 years.
She has taught workshops on writing
and editing for many organizations, including the
Maynard Institute for Journalism Education in
Oakland, Calif., and the Hampton University
communications department. She has also
been an instructor in media studies and public speaking
at Mercer County Community College and is the host
of the radio program Black Catholics, Yes!, on
WIMG 1300 AM, WHTG 1410 AM and WFJS FM, 89.3 FM,
for the Diocese of Trenton, NJ.
A West Virginia native who spent
most of her childhood in Western Pennsylvania, she
is a journalism graduate of Marshall University
in Huntington, West Virginia, and was a student
there at the time of the events depicted in the
movie, We Are Marshall, which she wrote about
in Heart and Soul last year. She also
has a master’s degree in journalism and public affairs
from the American University in Washington, D.C.
Angela is married to Michael I. Days, the editor
of the Philadelphia Daily News, They
have four adopted sons, now grown,
bibliographical
information
David Anthony Durham is
the author
of Arcacia: Book One The War with the Mein
and Pride of Carthage. His first novel,
Gabriel’s Story, received the 2002 Hurston/Wright
Legacy Award for Debut Fiction, a 2002 Alex Award
from the American Library Association and the 2001
First Novel Award from the Black Caucus of the American
Library Association, a New
York Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times
Best of 2001 pick, a Booklist Editor’s Choice,
and was chosen for the book clubs of the Washington
Post and Kansas City Star. His second
novel, Walk Through Darkness (Doubleday)
appeared in April 2002. This novel tells the tale
of a runaway slave and the Scottish immigrant hired
to track him. David is currently on the faculty
of the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University
of Southern Maine, and is an associate professor
in the MFA Program at Cal State University, Fresno.
bibliographical
information
Thomas Sayers
Ellis co-founded The Dark
Room Collective (in Cambridge, Massachusetts); and
received his M.F.A. from Brown University in 1995.
He is the recipient of a Mrs. Giles Whiting Writers’
Award and fellowships from The Bread Loaf Writers’
Conference, The Fine Arts Work Center, Yaddo and
The MacDowell Colony. His poems have appeared in
Callaloo, The Best American Poetry (1997 and
2001), Grand Street, Poetry, Tin House and numerous
anthologies, including Legitimate Dangers: American
Poets of the New Century. He is the author of
The Maverick Room (2005), which won the
John C. Zacharis First Book Award, The Good Junk
(Take Three #1, 1996). The Genuine
Negro Hero (2001) and, a chaplet, Song On
(2005). Currently Mr. Ellis is an Assistant Professor
of Writing at Sarah Lawrence College and a faculty
member of The Lesley University low-residency M.F.A
Program. His Quotes Community: Notes for Black
Poets is forthcoming from the University of
Michigan Press.
bibliographical
information
Kyra D. Gaunt, Ph.D. ("Professor
G") is a new brand of feminist intellectual
voicing transformation through song and scholarship.
In 2007 as an Associate Professor of music and anthropology
at Baruch College-CUNY, she co-won the Merriam Prize
for the most outstanding book in the field of ethnomusicology
for The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the
Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-hop (2006). She
also released Be the True Revolution, her
self-produced debut CD available on iTunes and CDBaby.net.
This CD of original songs features a harmonica-laced
blues inspired from finding her birth father five
years ago and has links to her work on girls'
musical games. Committed to bridging the gaps between
the races, sexes and generations she facilitates
Success with the Opposite Sex: Get Related Not
Dated™ a monthly event devoted to fostering
intimacy between black men and women. Visit the
blog http://swtos.blogspot.com
and her websites http://kyraocity.com
and http://myspace.com/kyraocity.
Gaunt was also a Fellow with the NEH and the Ford
Foundation. A consultant for PBS's Emmy-winning
Between the Lions, she appeared in the PBS
documentary Sweet Honey in the Rock: Raise Your
Voice (2005) among others, and she will serve
on the selection committee for the 2008-2009 Fulbright
mtvU Graduate Fellowship.
bibliographical
information
Thomas Glave , writer and
political activist, teaches English at State University
of New York, Binghamton. He was born in the Bronx
and grew up there and in Kingston, Jamaica. A graduate
of Bowdoin College and Brown University, Glave traveled
as a Fulbright Scholar to Jamaica, he studied Jamaican
historiography and Caribbean intellectual and literary
traditions as a Fulbright Scholar. While in Jamaica,
Glave worked on issues of social justice, and helped
found the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals,
and Gays. Glave is author of the essay collection
Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent,
nominated for a 2006 Publishing Triangle Gay Men’s
Nonfiction Award and winner of a 2005 Lambda Literary
Award. His fiction collection, Whose Song? and
Other Stories, was nominated by the American
Library Association for their “Best Gay/Lesbian
Book of the Year” award and by the Quality Paperback
Book Club for their Violet Quill/Best New Gay/Lesbian
Fiction Award. His newest book of fiction, The
Torturer’s Wife, will appear in 2008, along
with his edited anthology, Our Caribbean: A Gathering
of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles.
He is the recipient of numerous fellowships and
awards, including an O. Henry Prize for fiction
and fellowships from the National Endowment for
the Arts and the Fine Arts Center in Provincetown.
bibliographical
information
Farah Jasmine Griffith is
Professor of English and Comparative Literature
at Columbia University in the City of New York.
Professor Griffin also holds appointments in the
Center for Jazz Studies and the Institute for Research
in African American Studies, which she directed
from 2003-2006. She is the author of Who Set
You Flowin': The African American Migration
Narrative (Oxford University Press, 1995), an
interdisciplinary study of representations of African-American
migration in literature, painting and music and
If You Can't Be Free, Be A Mystery: In Search
of Billie Holiday (Free Press, 2001). She is
also the editor of Stranger in the Village:
Two Centuries of African American Travel Writing
(Beacon, 1998) and a collection of letters, Beloved
Sisters and Loving Friends: Letters from Rebecca
Primus of Royal Oak, Maryland and Addie Brown of
Hartford, Connecticut 1854-1868 (Knopf, 1999).
Most recently she co-edited with Robert O'Meally
and Brent Hayes Edwards, Uptown Conversation:
The New Jazz Studies (Columbia University Press,
2004). Her forthcoming book, Clawing at the
Edges of Cool: Miles Davis and John Coltrane, 1955-1961
(with Salim Washington) will be published by
St. Martin's Press.
In 2005, Professor Griffin became
one of the first recipients of the Columbia University
Distinguished Faculty Awards: These awards honor
exceptional teaching in the Arts and Sciences, recognizing
faculty who demonstrate unusual merit across a range
of professorial activities, including: scholarship,
University
citizenship and professional involvement. The awards
place a primary emphasis on the instruction and
mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students.
bibliographical
information
Donna Hill has more
than fifty published titles to her credit, three
of which were adapted for television. She has been
featured in Essence, The Daily News,
USA Today, Today’s Black Woman, and Black
Enterprise magazine, among many others. Donna
currently works with the Elders Writing program
through the Center for Black Literature at Medgar
Evers College, CUNY.
bibliographical
information
Erica Hunt is author of
Arcade Kelsey, 1996. She is a widely-admired
poet, based in New York, where she is also President
of the Twenty-First Century Foundation, which gives
grants to organizations that address root causes
of social injustice affecting the Black community.
When discussing her poetry, Hunt states: "Years
ago, I was asked whether my poems are about "real
things." It was a challenging question then,
and made even more challenging by current events,
which have introduced to us in intimate terms degrees
of violence, real everyday for three-fourths of
the world. That question about poetry and the "real"
jostles the horizon for poetry: how does aggressively
speculative writing, strategies of intensification,
opacity/excavation/illumination have value beyond
their practice, to influence the world in which
we live?" Ms. Hunt's professional involvement
in philanthropy spans 24 years and is the author
of numerous articles on black philanthropy.
bibliographical
information
Lawrence Jackson is the author
of Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius. He
has published criticism and non-fiction in Baltimore
Magazine, New England Quarterly, Massachusetts Review,
Antioch Review, American Literature and American
Literary History. He teaches English and African
American Studies at Emory University. His forthcoming
memoir is called Black Like Nobody I Know.
He has held fellowships from the W.E.B. Du Bois
Center, the Stanford Humanities Center, the Ford
Foundation, and the National Humanities Center.
He teaches English and African American Studies
at Emory University. He has two forthcoming projects:
a memoir called Black Like Nobody I Know,
and a literary history called Renaissance of
Indignation: a history of African American writers
and critics, 1934-1960.
bibliographical
information
Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
a poet, fiction writer and teacher, represents
a “new” generation of black poets writing in the
blues poetic; a proud black feminist as well, her
creative work reinvestigates the crossroads of gender,
race, and history. She is the author of three books
of poetry, The Gospel of Barbecue (Kent State
University Press, 2000); Outlandish Blues
(Wesleyan University Press, 2003); and Red Clay
Suite (Southern Illinois University Press, 2007).
She has received an award from the Rona Jaffe Foundation,
a fellowship from the MacDowell Colony, and a poetry
fellowship from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference.
Her poetry has appeared in several journals and
magazines, including African American Review,
American Poetry Review, Brilliant Corners:
A Journal of Jazz and Literature, Callaloo,
The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review,
Ploughshares and Prairie Schooner;
and in over a dozen anthologies, including Blues
Poems (Everyman/Random House, 2003). Honorée’s
stories have been published in Brilliant Corners,
Callaloo, Indiana Review, The
Kenyon Review, The New England Review,
and Story Quarterly; she is at work on her
first novel. A native southerner, Honorée now lives
on the prairie where she is Associate Professor
of English at the University of Oklahoma and teaches
creative writing.
bibliographical
information
Omari Jeremiah is a teen
age boy currently living in The Bronx, NY. He wrote
his first book, The Paper Boy, and created
these wonderful characters when he was only 12.
This body of work is about an ordinary 11-year-old
boy (Michael Wood) who becomes a superhero (Paperboy)
by defending other students and standing up to bullies.
From a very early age, Omari showed a keen interest
in writing. He has written many short stories and
poems. Omari believes that writing is a way to
express your feelings, your internal emotions and
your creativity in a way nobody can question. He
is also an avid reader and has read hundreds of
books. Omari hopes to grow up to be a professional
author, fencer and saxophonist. He currently resides
in the Bronx with his parents, Samuel and Sonja
Jeremiah, both Public School teachers, his sister,
Aquisha and his brother,
bibliographical
information
Tayari Jones was born and
raised in Atlanta, Georgia, and is a graduate of
Spelman College, The University of Iowa, and Arizona
State University. Currently, she is an Assistant
Professor in the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark University.
Her first novel, Leaving Atlanta, is a coming
of age story set during the city’s infamous child
murders of 1979-81. When asked why she chose this
subject matter for her first novel, she says, “This
novel is my way of documenting a particular moment
in history. It is a love letter to my generation
and also an effort to remember my own childhood.
Leaving Atlanta received many awards and
accolades including the Hurston/Wright Award for
Debut Fiction. It was named “Novel of the Year”
by Atlanta Magazine, “Best Southern Novel of the
Year,” by Creative Loafing Atlanta.
Her second novel, The Untelling,
published in 2005, is the story of a family struggling
to overcome the aftermath of a fatal car accident.
When asked why she chose to focus on a particular
family in this work after the sprawling historical
subject matter of Leaving Atlanta, Tayari
Jones explains The Untelling is a novel about
personal history and individual and familial myth-making.
Upon the publication of The Untelling, Essence
magazine called Jones, "a writer to watch."
The Atlanta Journal Constitution proclaims Jones
to be "one of the best writers of her generation."
In 2005, The Southern Regional council and the University
of Georgia Libraries awarded The Untelling
with the Lillian C. Smith Award for New Voices.
bibliographical
information
Valerie Kinloch, Ph.D. is
a professor in Adolescent Literacy and English Education
in the School of Teaching & Learning, College
of Education and Human Ecology, at The Ohio State
University. Her co-authored book, Still Seeking
an Attitude: Critical Reflections on the Work of
June Jordan, was released in 2004. Her book,
June Jordan: Her Life and Letters, published
in 2006, examines the life, career, and literary
contributions of Jordan. Valerie was awarded a Spencer
Foundation Research Grant and a Grant-in-Aid from
the National Council of Teachers of English to support
work on the literacy and activist practices of African
American and Latino high school and first generation
college students in Harlem (NYC). This work examines
how community gentrification and a politics of place
impact the lives, literacies, and cultural identities
of urban youth of color. http://ehe.osu.edu/edtl/faculty/KinlochValerie.htm
bibliographical
information
Quraysh Ali Lansana
is author of three poetry books, including They
Shall Run: Harriet Tubman Poems (Third World
Press, 2004), a children's book entitled The
Big World (Addison-Wesley, 1998), and editor
of seven anthologies, including Dream of A Word:
The Tia Chucha Press Poetry Anthology (Tia Chucha
Press, 2006) and Role Call: A Generational Anthology
of Social and Political Black Literature and Art
(Third World Press, 2001). He is Director of
the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature
and Creative Writing at Chicago State University,
where he is also Assistant Professor of English
and Creative Writing. He is also a former faculty
member of the Drama Division of The Juilliard School.
Quraysh is the former Associate Editor-Poetry for
Black Issues Book Review, and sits on the
Editorial Board of Tia Chucha Press. Quraysh earned
a Masters of Fine Arts degree at the Creative Writing
Program at New York University, where he was a Departmental
Fellow.
bibliographical
information
Nathan McCall was born in
Norfolk, Virginia. One of five children, he graduated
from Manor High School in Portsmouth and attended
Norfolk State University, where he received a Bachelor
of Arts degree in Journalism in 1981. Nathan has
worked as a reporter for The Virginian Pilot-Ledger
Star in Norfolk, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
and The Washington Post, where he worked
until taking a leave of absence to write his best
selling autobiography, Makes Me Wanna Holler,
A Young Black Man in America.
Makes Me Wanna Holler was
a New York Times bestseller and won the Blackboard
Book of the Year Award for 1995. In praise of
Makes Me Wanna Holler, noted scholar Henry
Louis Gates wrote, "Sooner of later every generation
must find its voice. It may be that ours belongs
to Nathan McCall, whose memoir is...a stirring tale
of transformation. He is a mesmerizing storyteller."
In 1997, McCall published his second book, What's
Going On, a series of essays about race relations
in America.
Now Nathan McCall has made his fiction
debut with the 2007 publication of Them,
(Atria Books), a timely and penetrating story poised
to generate the same seismic cultural impact as
his nonfiction work. Them tells the story
of Barlowe Reed, an African-American whose attempt
to buy the rundown house he rents in an historic
black neighborhood is confounded by the sudden appearance
of whites abandoning the suburbs for the inner city.
Over time, blacks and whites are drawn into wrenching
neighborhood power struggles as they wrestle with
alien world-views and the unsettling realities of
gentrification. Them was cited by Publishers
Weekly as one of the best books of 2007. The
Georgia Center for the Book, the Writer's Institute
of Georgia Perimeter College and the Chattahoochee
Review recently nominated Them as one of
10 finalists for the 2008 Townsend Prize for Fiction,
awarded to an outstanding novel or short-story collection
published by a Georgia writer during the past two
years.
McCall serves as a visiting lecturer
in the African American Studies Department at Emory
University in Atlanta, Ga. He is currently on sabbatical.
bibliographical
information
Terry McMillan was introduced
to literature while shelving books at the Port Huron
Library. Here she was stung by James Baldwin’s spotlight
eyes, a milestone moment. In 1977 Terry graduated
from UC Berkeley and relocated to NYC where she
worked on her fiction with the New Renaissance Writers’
Guild.
Terry won the Doubleday New Voices
in Fiction Award in 1986 for Mama as well
as an American Book Award from the Before Columbus
Foundation in 1987. She began her relationship with
Molly Friedrich, who has been her agent since.
Mama was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1987.
Her second novel, Disappearing Acts, received
critical acclaim, selling more than 2 million copies
after its release in 1989. Waiting To Exhale
was written during Terry’s tenure as a professor
at the University of Arizona. The hardcover release
spent more than 38 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller
list. The resulting film sold-out millions of theatres
and won 7 Grammy Awards and an MTV Movie Award.
In 1995 Terry’s Jamaican vacation inspired her fourth
novel, How Stella Got Her Groove Back. A
departure from her prior work, the stream-of-consciousness
fantasy was completed in the 30 days after she returned
home. The Interruption of Everything was
released in 2005.
bibliographical
information
Brenda Marie Osbey , the
former poet laureate of Louisiana, is a prolific
writer. Her literary career spans three decades
and her work has appeared in numerous journals,
magazines and anthologies including Callaloo,
Obsidian, Essence, Southern Exposure, Southern Review,
and Early Ripening: American
Women's Poetry
Now. Osbey currently teaches at Louisiana State
University. She is the recipient of numerous literary
honors and awards. Her last poetry collection, ALL
SAINTS: New & Selected Poems
(LSU Press) received the American Book Award and
is now in its third printing. In Spring 2004, she
was writer-in-residence at the Camargo Foundation
in Cassis, France. An author of poetry and prose
nonfiction, studies of her work appear in such volumes
as: The (Oxford, 1997) ; Forms
of Expansion: Recent Long Poems by Women
by Lynn Keller (U. Chicago Press, 1997) ; and
The
Future of Southern Letters
edited by Jefferson Humphries and John Lowe
(Oxford, 1996).
bibliographical
information
Kevin Powell is widely considered
one of America’s most important voices in these
early years of the 21st century. Legendary feminist
Gloria Steinem proclaims that "as a charismatic
speaker, leader, and a very good writer, Kevin Powell
has the courage...to be fully human, and this will
bring the deepest revolution of all." Kevin
Powell is a political activist, poet, journalist,
essayist, hiphop historian, public speaker, and
entrepreneur. A product of extreme poverty, welfare,
fatherlessness, and a single mother-led household,
he is a native of Jersey City, New Jersey and was
educated at New Jersey’s Rutgers University.
Kevin Powell is a longtime resident
of Brooklyn, New York, and it is from his base in
New York City that Powell has published seven books,
including his current title, Someday We’ll All
Be Free (Soft Skull Press). This new book is
a collection of provocative essays on freedom, democracy,
justice, and race in America, as inspired by Hurricane
Katrina, the 2004 presidential election and September
11th. Powell is set to publish three books in 2008,
No Sleep Till Brooklyn, his second volume
of poetry; Letters to Young America, an
essay compilation; and The Black Male Handbook:
A Blueprint for Life. Additionally, Powell is
at work on his childhood memoir, homeboy alone,
slated for 2010, and The Kevin Powell Anthology
(2011), which will highlight the first twenty-five
years of his literary career. Indeed, he has written
numerous essays, articles, and reviews through the
years for publications such as Esquire, Newsweek,
The Washington Post, Essence, Rolling
Stone, The Amsterdam News, and Vibe,
where he was a founding staff member and served
as a senior writer, interviewing and profiling,
among many others, General Colin Powell and the
late Tupac Shakur.
Most recently Powell has been a
Writing Fellow for the Joint Center for Political
and Economic Studies, as well as a Phelps Stokes
Fund Senior Fellow. And Powell is currently a 2008
Democratic candidate for the United State Congress
in Brooklyn, New York (www.kevinpowellforcongress.org).
bibliographical
information
Jaira Placide has worked
in children's book publishing for over a decade.
Her past employers are William Morrow, HarperCollins,
and Walt Disney. She is also the author of the book
Fresh Girl (ISBN 0-440-23764-5), her first
young adult novel published to rave reviews and
winner of the Society of Children's Book Writers
and Illustrators' Golden Kite Award. Ms. Placide
has taught creative, fiction, and children's
book writing classes at the Frederick Douglass Creative
Arts Center in New York City, and was a
contributing writer in the developmental
stages of Bill Cosby's animated Nickelodeon
series, "Little Bill." She has taught
composition, introduction to literature and children's
literature courses at Medgar Evers College/CUNY
in Brooklyn, New York. Her other awards and honors
include a University of Denver Publishing Institute
Scholarship, Doris Jean Austin Writing Fellowship,
and a Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center Fellowship
for Young African-American Fiction Writers. Ms.
Placide is currently working on her second young adult novel.
bibliographical
information
Lynne Procope , poet and
teaching artist from Trinidad and Tobago, is coauthor
of the collection, Burning Down the House (Soft
Skull Press, 2000). Her work appears in
the Summer/Fall 2000 Drums Voices Review, Poetry
Slam Anthology (Manic D Press, 1999) and How to
Read an Oral Poem (University of Illinois Press,
2002). She is a founder of the New York based
non-profit, the louderARTS Project Inc. and a director
of its Workshops and Outreach Program as well as
curator of the experimental performance workshop.
She was a member of the New York's 1998 National
Poetry Slam Championship winning team Procope has
been a featured poet/performer at several venues
across the US including colleges and universities
such as Pace, NYU, the University of Texas at Austin,
Macalester College, Hampshire College, Bryn Mawr,
Boston College, Amherst College and Mount Holyoke.
She has also been a featured artist in Jamaica’s
Calabash Literary Festival. www.louderarts.com
bibliographical
information
Nancy Rawles is the author
of three critically-acclaimed and award-winning
novels. Love Like Gumbo won an American Book
Award for its portrayal of a lesbian daughter's
struggle for independence from her warm but suffocating
family. Crawfish Dreams, the story of an
elder's coming to terms with the devastation
of her community and the depression of her offspring,
was selected for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great
New Writers Program. My Jim tells the story
of the wife and children of Mark Twain's famous
slave character from The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn. In her New York Times review, Helen Schulman
called My Jim "as heart-wrenching a
personal history as any recorded in American literature."
My Jim won the 2006 Legacy Award in Fiction
from the Hurston/Wright Foundation and a 2006 American
Library Association's Alex Award for adult books
that appeal to teen readers. Nancy Rawles lives
in Seattle, where she teaches history to middle
school students. Her email is: nrawles@earthlink.net
bibliographical
information
Robert Reid-Pharr one of
the nation’s leading scholars of both early Black
American literature as well as race and sexuality
studies, is professor of English and American Studies
at the Graduate Center of the City University of
New York. A prolific literary and cultural critic,
editor, and journalist he is the author of Conjugal
Union: The Body, the House, and the Black American
(Oxford University Press, 1999); Black, Gay,
Man: Essays (NYU Press, 2001); and Once You
Go Black: Choice, Desire, and the Black American
Intellectual (NYU Press, 2007). Educated at
the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and
Yale, his essays and reviews have appeared in The
Chronicle of Higher Education, Women and Performance,
Social Text, Transition, The African American Review,
Radical America, American Literature, American Literary
History, Afterimage, Callaloo, and The Cambridge
Companion to the African American Slave Narrative
among many other places. In addition to teaching
at the Graduate Center he has taught at Johns Hopkins
University, The University of Oregon, The University
of Chicago, Humboldt University of Berlin, and Swarthmore
College. He is the recipient of grants and fellowships
from the National Endowment for the Humanities,
The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the Library
Company of Philadelphia. He lives in Brooklyn.
bibliographical
information
Tracy Sherrod, president
of Tracy Sherrod Literary Services in New York City,
has been a publishing professional for nearly two
decades. She established Tracy Sherrod Literary
Services in 2003 and represents award-winning novelists
Kalisha Buckhanon and Donna Hemans; New York
Times bestselling author Karrine Steffans; cultural
critic bell hooks; poet Russell Goings; Street Literature
Writer of the Year Treasure E. Blue; celebrated
photographer Barron Claibourne; documentarian of
Bastards of the Party Cle “Bone” Sloan; as
well as several emerging, promising authors.
Before striking out on her own she
was a senior editor at Simon and Schuster. She has
also held editorial positions with Henry Holt and
Company, The Feminist Press, Essence, and
Marie Brown Literary Services. During her illustrious
career Ms. Sherrod has published several New
York Times bestsellers in addition to many
award-winning books. Among her bestsellers are Zane’s
Addicted; Tupac Shakur’s The Rose That
Grew from Concrete; and Pastor Mason (“Ma$e”)
Betha’s Revelations. Some of her works that
have received accolades and attention for their
literary merit include Douglass’ Women by
Jewell Parker Rhodes, Kin by Zelda Lockhardt,
and Breathing Room by Patricia Elam—all Zora
Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award nominees. Still
Life in Harlem by Eddy L. Harris was a 1996
New York Times Notable Book of the Year,
and The Envy of the World by Ellis
Cose was featured on the front page of the New
York Times Book Review.
bibliographical
information
Martha Southgate’s most recent
novel, Third Girl from the Left, was published
by Houghton Mifflin in September 2005. She is also
the author of The Fall of Rome (Scribner),
which received a 2003 Alex Award from the American
Library Association and was named one of the best
novels of 2002 by Jonathan Yardley of the Washington
Post. Her 2007 essay “Writers Like Me” in the
New York Times Book Review received considerable
notice in literary circles and the publishing industry.
She has received fellowships from the BreadLoaf
Writers Conference, the MacDowell Colony and the
Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She lives
in Brooklyn with her husband and two children. You
can visit her website at www.marthasouthgate.com
bibliographical
information
Patricia Spears Jones
is an award-winning poet, playwright and cultural
commentator and Pushcart Prize nominee. She is author
of two collections: Femme du Monde (Tia
Chucha Press) and The Weather That Kills
(Coffee House Press) and two chapbooks, Repuestas!
(Belladonna Books) and Mythologizing Always
(Telephone Books). She is the co-editor of Ordinary
Women: An Anthology of New York City Women
(out of print); and is contributing editor to Bomb
and Heliotrope. Recent publications include
the anthologies: Bowery Women: Poems; broken
land: Poems of Brooklyn; Poetry After 911; Best
American Poetry, 2000 and journals: PMS
#8; Court Green; Fifth Wednesday; TriQuarterly;
Black Renaissance Noire; Hanging Loose and
The Recluse. Mabou Mines' commissioned
play 'Mother' which premiered at La Mama ETC in
1994 and "The Brooklyn Song" for Song
for New York: What Women Do When Men Sit Knitting,
a site-specific theater work that premiered in August
2007, which was published in its entirety in The
Brooklyn Rail. Her reviews and commentary are
in Black Issues Book Review, Bomb, Poetry Project
Newsletter, Essence, and her column "Cosmopolitan
in Brooklyn" in Calabar Magazine,
www.calabar.org.
She received her M.F.A. from Vermont College MFA
in Creative Writing Program and her B.A. from Rhodes
College, Memphis, TN.
bibliographical
information
Quincy Troupe is the author
of seventeen books, including eight volumes of poetry,
of which the latest is The Architecture
of Language, published in October 2006, by Coffee
House Press, the recipient of the 2007 Patterson
Prize for Continued Literary Excellence, and a finalist
for the 2007 Hurston/Wright Prize for Poetry. Transcircularities:
New and selected Poems (Coffee
House Press, 2002), his 7th volume of
poems, was selected by Publishers Weekly
as one of the ten best books of poetry published
in 2002. Transcircularities
also received the 2003 Milt Kessler
Poetry Award and was a finalist for the 2003 Paterson
Poetry Prize.
He is Professor Emeritus of Creative
Writing and American and Caribbean Literature at
the University of California, San Diego. He was
the first official Poet Laureate of the state of
California is presently the Editor of Black Renaissance
Noire, an academic, cultural, political and
literary journal published by the Institute of African
American Affairs at New York University.
Troupe has published his poetry,
articles and essays in over 200 publications worldwide,
and his poetry, prose and books have been translated
into many languages. He has read his work throughout
the United States, as well as in Europe, Africa,
Canada, the Caribbean, Mexico, Columbia, and Brazil.
Mr. Troupe is the recipient of two
American Book Awards: in 1980 for poetry for his
collection Snake-Back Solos (Reed and Cannon,
1990) and in non-fiction for Miles: The Autobiography
(Simon & Schuster, 1989). In 1991 Troupe received
the prestigious Peabody Award for co-producing and
writing the radio series, The Miles Davis Radio
Project. He is two-time winner of the prestigious
Heavyweight-Champion of Poetry (1994 and 1995),
sponsored by The World Poetry Bout of Taos, New
Mexico and been a featured poet on two PBS television
series on poetry: The United States of Poetry (1996),
and Bill Moyers' The Power of the Word (1989)
for which Mr. Troupe's segment, The Living Language,
received a 1990 Emmy Award for Television Excellence.
Amistad Harper Collins published
Troupe’s 16th book, The Pursuit of Happyness,
an autobiography he co-wrote with Chris Gardner
on Mr. Gardner’s life, in June 2006. The book was
a best seller for 36 weeks nationwide (it was number
1 for 10 weeks), and was the basis of the movie
of the same name, starring Will Smith. Troupe lives
between New York City and Goyave, Guadeloupe, with
his wife, Margaret.
bibliographical
information
Eisa Nefertari Ulen is the
author of Crystelle Mourning, a novel described
by The Washington Post as “a call for healing
in the African American community from generations
of hurt and neglect.” Her essays, exploring topics
ranging from Hip Hop to Muslim life in America post-9/11
to the gap between the Civil Rights generation and
Generation X, have been widely anthologized. Nominated
by Essence magazine for a National Association
of Black Journalists Award, she has contributed
to numerous other publications, including The
Washington Post, Ms., Health, Heart & Soul,
Vibe, The Source, Black Issues Book Review, Quarterly
Black Review of Books, and CreativeNonfiction.org.
She is the recipient of a Frederick Douglass
Creative Arts Center Fellowship for Young African
American Fiction Writers and a Provincetown Fine
Arts Work Center Fellowship. Ulen graduated from
Sarah Lawrence College and earned a master’s degree
from Columbia University. She teaches English
at Hunter College in New York City and lives with
her husband in Brooklyn. You can reach Eisa online
at: www.EisaUlen.com.
bibliographical
information
Gregory L. Walker (Brother G)
is a Chicago based journalist, poet, historian and
author. While working part-time for the Associated
Press, Brother G spent 10 years conducting research
for the African Legends genre, writing Shades
Of Memnon" and developing contacts in archeology,
anthropology and linguistics worldwide. He has also
written columns on comic books and graphic novels
for the American Library Association, contributed
to the national news publication In These Times
and is one of a popular group of Chicago poets who
inspired the motion picture Love Jones"
Recipient of the Best New Author Of the Year Award
at Chicago's Black Book Fair 2000, Brother G
has been a featured speaker at the Harlem Book Fair,
The East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention, the
Association For The Study of Classical African Civilizations,
and numerous other schools, colleges and organizations.
Shades Of Memnon is an exciting,
inspiring, award winning series of adventure novels
written in the epic style similar to classics like
The Lord Of The Rings. According to many
teachers, these books help to promote a truly multicultural
experience in the classroom, promoting historical
self-esteem and interracial respect. The reading
program consists of books, teaching guides, music
and art and has proven to be a powerful educational
tool.
bibliographical
information
Jerry W. Ward, Jr., Distinguished
Scholar and Professor of English and African World
Studies at Dillard University, is a widely published
poet and literary critic whose articles, essays,
and poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies..
Ward earned his Ph.D. in English from the University
of Virginia (1978). He was the Lawrence Durgin Professor
of English at Tougaloo College (1970-2002) and Chair
of the Department of English (1979-1986). In 1984,
he was a program officer at the National Endowment
for the Humanities; he was a Fellow at the National
Humanities Center in 1999-2000.
Among Ward’s honors and awards are
Teacher of the Year (1993), Tougaloo College; Humanities
Teacher Award (1995) and Public Humanities Scholar
Award (1997) from the Mississippi Humanities Council;
the Darwin T. Turner Award for Excellence (2000)
from the African American Literature and Culture
Society, and induction into the International Literary
Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent (2001).
Ward’s articles, essays, and poems
have appeared in many journals and anthologies.
He serves on the editorial boards of African American
Review , Drumvoices Revue, and The Mississippi Quarterly.
He compiled and edited Trouble the Water: 250 Years
of African American Poetry (1997) and co-edited
Redefining American Literary History (1990) and
Black Southern Voices (1992). From 2007 to the
end of 2008, Ward is devoting attention to activities
associated with the Richard Wright Centennial 2008
and a memoir on the impact of Katrina on his life
and work.
bibliographical
information
Terrie M. Williams is a licensed
clinical social worker, and founder of The Terrie
Williams Agency and The Stay Strong Foundation.
She is also the best-selling author of four books,
including her latest, entitled BLACK PAIN: It
Just Looks Like We're Not Hurting (Scribner).
Currently, Terrie is committed to guiding people
to live emotionally healthy lives.
bibliographical
information
Julia Wright, the elder daughter
of the African American writer Richard Wright and
the Polish-Jewish literary agent Ellen Poplar, was
educated in exile in Paris and London. When her
father died in 1960 in Paris, she was studying Sociology
at the Sorbonne University. In 1962, she left France
for Africa where she worked mainly as a journalist
first in Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana, co-founding
the French version of the "Spark", and
subsequently in Nigeria during the secessionist
war (warfront reporting).
She has been a civil rights advocate,
first through S.N.C.C representing James Foreman
in Paris then, thanks to Ellen Wright's literary
representation of Eldridge Cleaver, she supported
the International Secretariat of the Black Panthers
both in Paris and in Algiers. She is a co-founder
of the Richard Wright Newsletter and has written
introductions to two of her father's books:
Haiku - This Other World and A Father's
Law, (published Jan 08/08) – as well as introductions
to James Foreman's Liberation Come from a
