Donald Bogle is one of the foremost authorities on Black representation in films and entertainment history. His books include Running Press's Hollywood Black; the groundbreaking Toms, Coons, Mulattoes…
Zadie Smith is an English novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her debut novel, White Teeth (2000), immediately became a best-seller and won a number of awards. She became a tenured professor i…
Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist and editor. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) bro…
Laura Esquivel is a Mexican novelist, screenwriter, and former politician best known for her internationally acclaimed debut novel Like Water for Chocolate (Como agua para chocolate). Blending magical…
Barack Obama was the 44th president of the United States, elected in November 2008 and holding office for two terms. He is the author of two previous New York Times bestselling books, Dreams from My F…
Poet, playwright and author Denis Johnson was born in Munich, West Germany, in 1949 and was raised in Tokyo, Manila and Washington. He earned a masters' degree from the University of Iowa and received…
Thomas Lanier Williams III, better known by the nickname Tennessee Williams, was a major American playwright of the twentieth century who received many of the top theatrical awards for his work. He mo…
Patrick McGilligan is the author of Clint one of America’s pre-eminent film biographers. He has written the life stories of directors George Cukor and Fritz Lang — both New York Times “Notable Books” …
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of the YA graphic novel In Real Life, the nonfiction business book Informati…
Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little), also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, was an American Black Muslim minister and a spokesman for the Nation of Islam.
After leaving the Nation of Islam in 1964, he mad…
Frederick Douglass (né Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey) was born a slave in the state of Maryland in 1818. After his escape from slavery, Douglass became a renowned abolitionist, editor and femin…
Edna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were popular in her lifetime and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big (1924), Show Boat (1926; made into the c…
Jay Anson (November 4, 1921 – March 12, 1980) was an American author whose most famous work was The Amityville Horror. After the runaway success of that novel, he wrote 666, which also dealt with a ha…
Danielle McGuire is an award-winning author and historian interested in the African American freedom struggle and the legacies of racial and sexual violence. She lives with her husband and two childre…
Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author most recently TAKE MY HAND (2022). Take My Hand was awarded the 2023 NAACP Image Award for Literary Work-Fiction and the BCALA Fiction Awa…
Kristina Forest is the USA Today bestselling author of romances for both teens and adults. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at The New School and she can often be found rearranging her bookshelf…
Born in 1943 to schoolteachers in Charlotte, N.C., Oliver, who was Black, attended segregated schools, university in Greensboro and the Iowa Writers’ Worksh…
