Friends and Mentors
The following teachers, writers, editors and agents have been instrumental in my publishing career. Click on their names or the links below to learn more about them.
Jenice Armstrong. A Philadelphia Daily News columnist, Jen gave me a big break when she invited me to participate in what we would eventually call the Eveningstar Writer's Group with accomplished writers such as herself, Karen Quinones Miller, Shiela Simmons, Mister Mann Frisby, Kamal Ravikant and Leslie Esdaile Banks. In the wonderful, supportive cocoon that was Eveningstar, I was mentored and honed my skills.
Ken Bingham. Kenny once compared a few passages I wrote for his short-story writing class at Temple University's adult education program to one of my all-time favorite books, To Kill a Mockingbird. Needless to say, I was stunned. His encouraging style made me know for certain that my creative writing was special. Kenny made me believe there was a place in publishing for me. An amazing and encouraging teacher, I took Ken's class 5 times. He now teaches at Drexel University.
Meredith Broussard. Meredith believes in protecting people by challenging the stories the media tells them in order to scare them to death. Recently she's been challenging whether food allergies are as significant a problem as they seem to be or if someone's profiting from our fear. She often blogs about the subject here.
Tamar Chansky, Ph.D. I met Tamar through my writers group, Wordspace, and over the years she has become a dear friend. Tamar is a psychologist and child-anxiety expert who has written a number of books to help distressed children. She's also a big supporter of my MEGA girls, the track team that I champion, and a future partner in crime for some ideas I am birthing.
Harriette Cole. Harriette has authored a number of books, ranging from Jumping the Broom: The African American Wedding Planner to Choosing Truth: Living an Authentic Life, and has hired me on numberous occasions to write for American Legacy Woman. She was also the angel who referred me to Houghton Mifflin publisher Andrea Pinkney, who hired me to work with Venus and Serena Williams.
Leslie Esdaile. (My dear friend Leslie has passed away. I leave this link to her as my way of honoring her amazing spirit and her work.) Also known as L.A. Banks, Leslie Esdaile Banks and Leslie Banks, Leslie is the most creative and prolific writer I know. We first connected when I was just dreaming about writing and she was working full-time and earning her MFA at Temple University's film school. We reconnected several years later at a National Writers' Union workshop, where I convinced her that freelancing was do-able and introduced her to our agent Manie Barron of The Menza Barron Agency. Today she has authored over 25 books, including the acclaimed Vampire Huntress series, featuring a vampire huntress of color. Go here to check out the trailer for her latest book.
Eileen Flanagan. Eileen is a dear friend, coffee-shop buddy, professor and most recently the author of "The Wisdom to Know the Difference: When to Make A Change and When to Let Go," a wonderful spiritual self-help book based on the Serenity Prayer. She's also a member of my writing group, WordSpace, and didn't get too annoyed with me when I hounded her to death about getting a Mac. Check out her Imperfect Serenity blog.
Marita Golden/ The Hurston-Wright Writer's Workshop. The premiere workshop for writers of color, some of the nation's most amazing literary talent attends Hurston-Wright. While I don't count myself among them, I did take a wonderful poetry workshop there from acclaimed wordsmith Nikky Finney.
Robert Hanson. After my 10th grade English teacher brutalized me -- and everyone else in the class -- leaving me feeling like I was a terrible writer and too dense to understand literature, Mr. Hanson, my 11th grade English teacher at Shaker Heights High School taught me to love and appreciate literature -- and to know I was smart enough to understand it.
Sara Lomax Reese. Sara gave me my first break in publishing, offering me the managing editor job at HealthQuest: The Publication of Black Wellness, in 1997. While HQ, as we called it, didn't survive the Recession, it continues as an online talk-radio show, and Sara has moved on to bigger things as president of 900AM WURD radio in Philadelphia.
Conrad Louis-Charles. A picture's worth 1000 words so I'll spare you my gushing about this incredible photographer, who took the photograph that appears on my homepage. See for yourself how talented he is. Go here to check out his main website or here to view his fine-art wedding photography.
Karen E. Quinones Miller. This Essence bestselling author and self-publishing guru is also an agent -- talk about talent! A former writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Karen had a hard time interesting publishing companies in her first novel, Satin Doll. So she said, "forget them," and published and sold it herself. Ultimately, she peddled 24,000 copies out of the trunk of her car. You can bet publishing companies came calling then. Knowing Karen, I'm sure she made them pay! Karen is one of the original members of Philadelphia's Eveningstar writer's group.
Denene Millner and Nick Chiles. This prolific husband and wife have published 6 books writing in tandem. Denene has written two books on her own. Both are accomplished and award-winning journalists and editors. Denene is the former executive editor of Honey magazine and a senior editor at Parenting. Nick and I worked together to launch Odyssey Couleur: Travel in Color, the travel magazine for people of color.
Jill Nelson. Jill Nelson saved my life. During my mid-20's, I read her book Volunteer Slavery, a memoir describing the price she paid for being a pioneering journalist at such venerable institutions as the Washington Post. Reading her story gave me language for the indescribable inner dissatisfaction I was feeling in corporate America and helped me understand the price I would pay if I didn't find the courage to find myself.
NiaOnline.com. Cheryl Mayberry, Sheryl Huggins and the team at NiaOnline, an incredible website for black women, are pioneering and visionary human beings. My first job as a self-employed person was as a senior channel producer for their health and beauty pages.
Miriam Peskowitz. A dear friend, neighbor and the New York Times best-selling author of both The Daring Book for Girls and The Double-Daring Book for Girls, Miriam has a wonderful garden that I occasionally use as my summer office. She is a dear friend and a member of WordSpace.
Andrea Pinkney. True story: One day I prayed to work on a book with Venus and Serena Williams. A few weeks later Andrea, whom I did not know, called and offered me the opportunity to work with them on a children's book. Literally a Godsend, Andrea has encouraged and mentored me, opening the door to a new world of opportunities, including my project with Angela Bassett and Courtney Vance.
Kamal Ravikant. This internet and marketing genius -- he taught me how to build this website in only one hour -- is an amazing writer of literary fiction. Another member of the Eveningstar Writing Group, go here to check out the prologue of his forthcoming novel, A Thin Place.
Jude Ray. My friend Jude is an award-winning filmmaker and the executive producer of Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, an amazing about the DeWolfs, a family with slave-trading roots that had the courage to examine their past and it implications for the present.
Pankaj Sharma. Pankaj is a dear friend as well as a spiritual teacher who helped me to understand the importance of meditating. Once at Pankaj's prompting after he led a visioning meditation session, I wrote down the thoughts that had crossed through my mind. I wrote that I should travel to Thailand to take a Thai cooking class, since I love Thai food so much. Two months later I was offered the opportunity to travel on an all-expenses-paid press junket to Thailand. (These types of events occur regularly when you bring your body, mind and spirit into alighment.) By participating in a yoga nidra session that Pankaj taught, I learned that deep breathing alone can make you high!
Lori Tharps. Lori is my neighbor and founder of my writing group, WordSpace. She's also a professor at Temple University as well as the author of a novel, Substitute Me, a memoir, Kinky Gazpacho, and the nonfiction book Hair Stories: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America. Check out her blog My American Melting Pot.
Linda Villarosa. A former editor of the New York Times health pages and managing editor of Essence magazine, Linda now runs the journalism program at City University of New York. Linda was my first writing mentor. She trained me to edit, encouraged me to freelance, taught me how to ask for what I am worth and hired me for my first freelance job, at NiaOnline.com.
Phill Wilson. Phill is CEO of the Black AIDS Institute, a think tank about black people and HIV/AIDS. He began championing this cause back when black people mistakenly believed that HIV was a "gay disease". In 2006 Phill invited me to pen the Getting Real report on black women and HIV/AIDS. In 2008, he asked me to volunteer as a journalist at the 2008 World AIDS Conference in Mexico City, reporting on issues of interest to black people that would not have been covered by the mainstream media. Most recently I became editor-in-chief of his weekly e-newsletter Black AIDS Weekly.
Kai Wright. Kai is an award-winning journalist specializing in sex, race and health. The article he wrote for Real Health on the relationship between the HIV epidemic among African-Americans and the high incarceration rates among black men, sparked a long-overdue national dialogue about the role the prison-industrial complex plays in HIV's spread, putting previously overstated rumors about the "down-low's" role in a more appropriate perspective.