a few words about me
I am a native of St. Louis, Missouri. I grew up on the city’s north side in an all-black working class community. I was educated in the St. Louis Public School System in segregated schools. My family didn’t have a lot of money but we were blessed. We were healthy, had all of our basic needs met, had lots of love, friends and family, and a wonderful church home, Washington Metropolitan AME Zion Church, a historic institution that was established in the city during the late nineteenth century.
I was always active in my church and started singing in the choir when I was three years old. As I grew, I became active with choral activities, and at the age of eleven was selected to sing in a city-wide children’s choir that did guest performances with the renowned St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, which was then under the direction of the esteemed conductor, Maestro Leonard Slatkin. I also sang throughout high school and college, and I continue to perform as a soloist with my current church home’s Inspirational Singers Contemporary Gospel Choir, at St. Joseph’s AME Church in Durham, North Carolina.
I started telling stories when I was a little bitty thing. I started writing stories on that huge, lined elementary school paper in pencil when I was eight years old at the suggestion of my mother, who told me it would be easier to read all that I was making up and trying to tell her at any given time.
My first stories were generally about little black girls who lived in St. Louis. These tales were taken to another level when I reached high school and started writing about black urban teen life during the 1970s. My first audience consisted of my cousins (I’m an only child) and good friends, who read the handwritten stories and passed them down, page-by-page, mid-west assembly line style, reader-to-reader while we sat on the porch, or at school.
After graduating from Beaumont High School, I won a full scholarship to Washington University in St. Louis and earned an undergraduate degree with honors in Psychology. I also earned an M.S.W. in Social Work, along with an M. Ed. in Counseling Education from Washington University. Later, I moved to North Carolina and completed my academic training by earning graduate degrees in Public Health as well as United States History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
I was on my way to becoming a history professor when the writing bug really hit me and I started writing the draft of my first novel, Church Folk. I became an author when Church Folk was published by Grand Central Publishing Company (formerly Warner Books) in June 2001. I was blessed beyond belief with the response to this outrageously funny book about black “peepes” who went to “chutch.” Since that time, I have published four more books with Grand Central Publishing, Second Sunday (June 2003), Holy Ghost Corner (September 2006), Up at the College (April 2009), and More Church Folk, the sequel to Church Folk (July 2010).
I am working on my next novel, to be set in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Writing is a ministry for me. I love the Lord and I love writing about God and church life. It has been a tremendous blessing to reach so many people with my stories. I praise God for this. I can’t imagine writing in any other way.
God has been good to me. I have my health and strength, two beautiful daughters, a handsome grandson, great church home, and friends and family, along with a great group of readers.
“I will extol the Lord at all times; His praise will always be on my lips. My soul will boast in the Lord; let the afflicted hear and rejoice. Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt His name together.” Psalm 34: 1-3, NIV
Favorite Books
I have very eclectic tastes in books. But here is a short-list of literature that has influenced me from childhood until now.
The Bible by God (favorite versions include, New King James, New International Version, and the Amplified Bible). Favorite books in the bible are Ruth, Esther, Joshua, and Revelation (I have to confess that there are some very scary sections in the Book of Revelation. But the description of heaven is, as my kids would say, “crunked.”)
Little Women (Louisa May Alcott), The Souls of Black Folk and Dusk of Dawn: An Essay toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept (W.E.B. DuBois), Why We Can’t Wait and Letters From A Birmingham Jail (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.), The Prophet (Kahlil Gibran), Family and The Matter is Life (J. California Cooper), Jonah’s Gourd Vine and Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston), Waiting To Exhale (Terry McMillan), Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (Robin D.G. Kelley), Samson (Jacquelin Thomas), the entire Easy Rawlins Series by Walter Mosley, The Purpose Driven Life (Rick Warren), The Shack (Wm. Young), Shanna (Kathleen Woodiwiss), From God to Gangsta Rap (Michael Eric Dyson), and the Vicar’s Daughters Series by Marian Chesney.
One of my prized literary possessions is a copy of an unpublished manuscript, Bethesda A. M. E.: A Romance of Negro Religion by W. E. B. DuBois (circa 1928-29), that is currently in the archives at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.