28 Days Year: 2009

Monica McKayhan writes adult and young adult fiction, with seven novels currently in print. Her first novel for young adults, Indigo Summer, was the launch title for Harlequin’s young adult imprint, Kimani TRU which made its debut in January of 2007.  That same year in May, Indigo Summer was named to the Essence bestsellers list, another [ Read the full article… ]

When Monalisa DeGross set out to be a writer, she began by writing what she read — romance.  It was an editor who turned her eye to the possibility of writing for children. DeGross considered the young people she knew. She thought about her love of words and the storytelling tradition in her mother’s family. Those [ Read the full article… ]

A native of Rich Square, North Carolina, Shelia P. Moses draws on her upbringing from her small hometown for many of her books.  According to her website biography, she got her start as a writer at the young age, but I was interested to learn that she self-published her first book One More River to [ Read the full article… ]

A lifestyle columnist with The Sun-Sentinel in Florida, young adult author Sherri Winston has made writing her career.  She is familiar with a life defined by deadlines, rewrites, and feedback from her editor and readers.  She is also not afraid to tackle controversial issues within her writing, be it an analysis on the lack of [ Read the full article… ]

From early on Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu had a few differences. He was an African-American and native New Yorker; she was born and raised in Taiwan. He was trained in the commercial arts; she was a fine artist. But they put their differences aside and learned from each other. Since then they’ve made [ Read the full article… ]

As a child, Lesa Cline-Ransome dreamed of being an investigative journalist. She loved the idea of uncovering stories and crafting in-depth articles. Then, one summer she got a taste of the field through a workshop, and changed her mind. She longed for the freedom of inventing her own stories and adding her flavor to tales she wrote. Cline-Ransome found what she was searching for in the world of [ Read the full article… ]

There are some authors who change the way you look at literature. Through their words, you are sent to unexpected places and leave transformed by the journey. You connect to characters whose stories, whether foreign or familiar, hit you where it counts — in the heart.  Jacqueline Woodson did that for me. The first Woodson book I read [ Read the full article… ]

Evelyn Coleman is candid about her life as an author and what her publishing experience has been like for the past fifteen years since her first book, The Foot Warmer and the Crow, was published. Her resume is extensive and shows that she values her calling as an author.  She respects the craft of writing [ Read the full article… ]