Black Writers in America


					Wednesday, March 10, 2010

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CUNY TV's acclaimed series, Black Writers in America, premiered in 2003 with Walter Mosley and Sonia Sanchez as the first guests. Each half-hour program presents two separate 15-minute interviews, introduced by actor Ossie Davis, in which the featured writer is able to reveal the thoughts, process, and intellect behind his or her own acclaimed work. The series can currently be seen on public television stations throughout the United States.

Black Writers in America grew out of the Fifth National Black Writers Conference (NBWC) at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York, where all of the previous conferences, beginning in 1986, have been held. Writer and CUNY Professor Elizabeth Nunez was Conference Director. Major funding for all of the Conferences was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

In the series, the writers respond to questions from Jerry Carlson, a CUNY Professor and host of CUNY TV’s popular “City Cinematheque” series. The camera never leaves the authors’ faces, however, resulting in up-close, revealing insights into the writers’ personalities, lives, and themes.

Capsule Biographies

Jeffery Renard Allen, born and raised in Chicago, began writing Rails Under My Back in 1990 while working on his doctorate at the University of Illinois. The novel received the 2000 Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Fiction, and recently Allen received a 2002 Whiting Writers' Award, given to encourage exceptionally promising ermerging talent. Allen has been at Queens College/CUNY since 1992, where he teaches African American literature and creative writing.

Bebe Moore Campbell is the author two New York Times bestsellers, Brothers and Sisters, and Singing in the Comeback Choir, the novel Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine, for which she won an NAACP Image Award, and Sweet Summer: Growing Up With & Without My Dad. She is a regular commentator for National Public Radio’s Morning Edition.

Syl Cheney Coker, a Sierra Leonean poet and novelist, is winner of two Commonwealth literary awards. He has published two novels, The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar, and The Silence of Memory; and three poetry collections, Concerto for an Exile, The Graveyard Also Has Teeth, and The Blood in the Desert’s Eyes.

Maryse Condé is Chairperson of the French and Francophone Institute, Columbia University. She is a novelist, playwright and scholar. Her novels include Crossing the Mangrove; Windward Heights; I, Tituba Black Witch of Salem; Segu; The Children of Segu; and A Season in Rihata. Her plays include, among others, Comedie d’amour and Pension les Alizes. Her most recent book is the autobiographical Tales From The Heart: True Tales from My Childhood.

Junot Diáz is the winner of a Pushcart Prize and the Eugene McDermott Award. His story collection, Drown (Riverhead Books) has been sold in 15 countries. Diáz was featured in Newsweek’s cover story on Latin culture and was named one of the “20 Writers for the 21st Century” by The New Yorker.

Arthur Flowers’ works include the novels De Mojo Blues (1986) and Another Good Loving Blues (1993). He is a blues singer, and co-founder of the New Renaissance Writers Guild in New York City, an offshoot of the famed Harlem Writers Guild. He teaches creative writing at Syracuse University.

E. Lynn Harris is author of the best selling novels, Invisible Life, If This World Were Mine, Just As I Am, and And This Too Shall Pass, and his latest, A Love of My Own. Harris’ work has appeared in American Visions, Essence, Go the Way Your Blood Beats and the award-winning anthology Brotherman: The Odyssey of Black Men in America.

Terry McMillan’s 1992 novel Waiting to Exhale topped the New York Times bestseller list and was made into a popular movie, as was her later novel How Stella Got Her Groove Back. Her first novel Mama received a National Book Award by the Before Columbus Foundation. McMillan was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and a Doubleday/Columbia University Literary Fellowship.

Walter Mosley is the author of many books, including Devil in a Blue Dress, A Red Death, White Butterfly and, most recently, Six Easy Pieces in the Easy Rawlins mystery series. His collection of stories, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, was made into an HBO movie. Walkin’ the Dog, Workin’ on the Chain Gang, and Gone Fishin’ are his most recent titles.

Elizabeth Nunez was director of the National Black Writers Conference 2000. A professor of English language and literature at Medgar Evars College, she is the author of the novel Grace, published last month. Her earlier novels include When Rocks Dance, Beyond the Limbo Silence, and Bruised Hibiscus.

Ishmael Reed is a novelist, playwright, and essayist. His works include Multi-America: Essays on Cultural Wars & Cultural Peace, Japanese By Spring, Airing Dirty Laundry; Mumbo Jumbo, and Writin’ is Fightin’. His novels and essays have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, German, and Dutch. In 1998, he was awarded the MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.”

Tim Reid is an Emmy-nominated actor, director and producer. His roles include The Richard Pryor Show, Simon & Simon, and Frank’s Place. He founded New Millennium Studios that produced the Showtime series Linc’s Place, and was the director of the film Once Upon A Time...When We Were Colored. He has received the Oscar Micheaux Award from the Producer’s Guild of America for outstanding lifetime achievement.

Sonia Sanchez, poet, is author of Homecoming, Homegirls and Handgrenades, Wounded in the House of A Friend, Does Your House Have Lions, and most recently Like the Singing Coming From A Drum, and most recently, Shake Loose My Skin. She is the Chairperson of the Women’s Studies Program at Temple University.

Sapphire is the author of American Dreams, a collection of poetry, which was cited by Publisher’s Weekly as “one of the strongest debut collections of the nineties.” Her novel, Push, won the 1996 Book-of-the-Month Club Stephen Crane Award for the First Fiction Novelist Award, and, in England, the coveted Mind Book of the Year Award.

Quincy Troupe is the author of thirteen books, including six volumes of poetry, the latest of which is a children’s book, take it to the hoop, Magic Johnson. He is the recipient of two American Book Awards for poetry and nonfiction. With Miles Davis he co-authored Miles: The Autobiography. He received a 1991 Peabody Award for The Miles Davis Radio Project.

John A. Williams is the author of Sissie, The Man Who Cried I Am, Night Song, Clifford’s Blues, and If I Stop I’ll Die: Comedy & Tragedy of Richard Pryor. He is a two-time recipient of the American Book Award, member, the National Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent, and the retired Paul Robeson Professor of English at Rutgers University.