Terry McMillan

Novelist, born in Port Huron, Michigan, USA. She studied at Berkeley and Columbia universities and later taught at the universities of Wyoming (1987–90) and Arizona (1990–2). She began writing in her mid-thirties, publishing Mama (1987) followed by a string of best-selling novels including Disappearing Acts (1989), Waiting to Exhale (1992; filmed 1995), How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1996), and A Day Late and a Dollar Short (2001). She is also editor of Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction (1990).Related Works
Novels
1987 Mama
1989 Disappearing Acts
1992 Waiting to Exhale
1996 How Stella Got Her Groove Back
2001 A Day Late and a Dollar Short
Editor
1990 Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction

Toni Morrison born Chloe Anthony Wofford

Writer and editor. Born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio. Considered one of the best contemporary novelists, she graduated from Howard University in 1953 and continued her education at Cornell University where she received a master of fine arts degree in 1955. After graduating from Cornell, she taught English at Texas Southern University and at Howard University.
Morrison left academia in 1965, taking a job as a senior editor for Random House in New York City. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970 and told the story of a young African-American girl who believes her incredibly difficult life would be better if only she had blue eyes. She continued to explore the African-American experience in its many forms and time periods in such works as Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), and Beloved (1987), which won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Morrison developed a strong following among both readers and critics whom fell for her lyrical style, sharp observations, and vibrant storytelling.
Morrison became a professor at Princeton University in 1989 and continued to produce great works. In recognition of her contributions to her field, she received the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, making her the first African American to be selected for the award. The next year, her novel Jazz was published, and she established a special workshop for writers and performers known as the Princeton Atelier. Along with her novels Paradise (1998) and Love (2003), Morrison wrote several children's books, including The Big Box (1999), The Book of Mean People (2002), and The Ant or the Grasshopper? (2003), with her son Slade.
In 2006, she announced she was retiring from her post at Princeton. That year, the New York Times Book Review named Beloved the best novel of the past 25 years.
Married to Harold Morrison from 1958 to 1964, Morrison has two sons—Harold and Slade. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey, and Upstate New York.
© 2006 A&E Television Networks. All rights reserved.Related Works
Novels
1970 The Bluest Eye
1973 Sula
1977 Song of Solomon
1981 Tar Baby
1988 Beloved
1993 Jazz
1998 Paradise
2003 Love
Children's Books
1999 The Big Box (with Slade Morrison)
Essays
1992 Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
Editor
1993 Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power

Langston Hughes

Poet, writer, playwright.Born February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. After publishing his first poem, ‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’ (1921), he attended Columbia University (1921), but left after one year to work on a freighter, travelling to Africa, living in Paris and Rome, and supporting himself with odd jobs. After his poetry was promoted by Vachel Linday, he attended Lincoln University (1925–9), and while there his first book of poems, The Weary Blues (1926), launched his career as a writer.
As one of the founders of the cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance, which he practically defined in his essay, ‘The Negro Artist and the Radical Mountain’ (1926), he was innovative in his use of jazz rhythms and dialect to depict the life of urban blacks in his poetry, stories, and plays. Having provided the lyrics for the musical Street Scene (1947) and the play that inspired the opera Troubled Island (1949), in the 1960s he returned to the stage with works that drew on black gospel music, such as Black Nativity (1961).
A prolific writer for four decades, he abandoned the Marxism of his youth, but never gave up protesting the injustices committed against his fellow African Americans. Among his most popular creations was Jesse B Semple, better known as ‘Simple’, a black Everyman featured in the syndicated column he began in 1942 for the Chicago Defender.
In his later years, Hughes completed a two-volume autobiography and edited anthologies and pictorial volumes. Because he often employed humour and seldom portrayed or endorsed violent confrontations, he was for some years disregarded as a model by black writers, but by the 1980s he was being reappraised and was newly appreciated as a significant voice of African Americans.Related Works
Poetry
1926 The Weary Blues
1927 Fine Clothes to the Jew
1942 Shakespeare in Harlem
1947 Fields of Wonder
1951 Montage of a Dream Deferred
1961 Ask Your Mama
Stories
1934 The Way of White Folks
1952 Laughing to Keep from Crying
1950 Simple Speaks His Mind
1953 Simple Takes a Wife
1957 Simple Stakes a Claim
1963 Something in Common
1965 Simple's Uncle
Novels
1930 Not Without Laughter
1958 Tambourines to Glory
Plays
1935 The Mulatto
Autobiography
1940 The Big Sea
1956 I Wonder As I Wander
Essays
1926 The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
1963 Five Plays

Dr. Michael Eric Dyson

On July 3, 2007, a press release was issued announcing his departure from the University of Pennsylvania where he was the Avalon Professor of Humanities for 4 years, to serve as a University Professor at Georgetown University, where he will teach theology, English, and African-American studies. A University professorship is said to be the highest position that a faculty member can have at Georgetown, which is the nation's oldest Roman Catholic and Jesuit university. Dyson also previously taught at DePaul University, Chicago Theological Seminary, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Columbia University and Brown University. Dyson holds a Ph.D. in religion from Princeton University. He is an ordained Baptist minister.
From January 2006 to February 2007 Dyson was the host of a daily syndicated talk radio program, The Michael Eric Dyson Show, which aired on weekdays from 10AM to 1PM (EST) on the Syndication One Radio Network (owned and operated by Radio One). He is also a regular commentator on National Public Radio, CNN, and the HBO TV program Real Time with Bill Maher. Dyson is best known for his commentary on American culture, particularly as it pertains to African Americans. Dyson uses the terms "Afristocracy" and "ghettocracy" to describe a bifurcation in American black society. He is also one of the world's leading scholars on the hip-hop music genre and the culture that surrounds it, as well as its roots in African and African-American cultures and influence on American popular culture

Eric Jerome Dickey

Eric Jerome Dickey was born in DeLand, Florida and attended the University of North Florida, where he earned a degree in Computer System Technology. In 1983, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in engineering.
Dickey was employed in the aerospace industry working as a software developer, before deciding that he wanted to pursue acting and stand-up comedy, and began the local and national comedy circuit.
Dickey wrote several comedy scripts for his personal comedy act, and later began writing poetry and short stories. In 1994, his first published short story "Thirteen" appeared in the IBWA's River Crossing, Voices of the Diaspora--an Anthology of the International Black Experience. A second short story "Days Gone By" was published in the magazine A Place to Enter.
Eric Jerome Dickey then developed a screenplay called "Cappuccino." "Cappuccino" was directed and produced by Craig Ross Jr. and appeared in coffeehouses around the Los Angeles area. In February 1998, "Cappuccino" made its local debut during the Pan African Film Festival at the Magic Johnson Theater in Los Angeles.
Eric Jerome Dickey has authored fifteen novels and has been featured in a variety publications, including Essence magazine, USA Today and The Los Angeles Times, and his novels have appeared on the bestseller lists of the "Blackboard," The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Dickey has appeared as a guest on many shows, including BET's Our Voices and CNN's Sunday Morning Live.
Eric Jerome Dickey will release two new books this year. "Sleeping with Strangers" will be released on April 10, 2007, and "Waking with Enemies" on August 7, 2007.
Eric is the author of the graphic novel called 'Storm', detailing the first meeting between the popular X-Men character Ororo Munroe and the king of the fictional land of Wakanda, the Black Panther.
Eric Jerome Dickey is also a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.

Eric Jerome Dickey, originally from Memphis, Tennessee, is the national best-selling author of Chasing Destiny, Genevieve, Drive Me Crazy, Naughty or Nice, The Other Woman, Thieves' Paradise, Between Lovers, Liar's Game, Cheaters, Milk in My Coffee, Friends and Lovers, and Sister Sister, as well as a contributor to Got to Be Real and NAL's Mothers & Sons. He worked as a computer programmer, a middle school teacher, actor, and stand up comic before becoming a full-time novelist.

William Henry "Bill" Cosby, Jr., Ed.D.

Comedian, writer, television producer. Born William Henry Cosby on July 12, 1937 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Rather than repeat the tenth grade, he left school and joined the navy. While attending Temple University on an athletic scholarship, he appeared at New York's Gaslight Cafe (1962), where his comic routines were so successful that he left college to pursue a career in entertainment.
In 1965, Cosby became the first African American actor to star in a weekly television dramatic series, I Spy (1965–8), winning two Emmys as an undercover Central Intelligence Agency agent. Later series were The Bill Cosby Show (1969–71), The New Bill Cosby Show (1972–3), and Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids (1972–84). His interest in children and education led him to earn MA and EdD degrees at the University of Massachusetts and to incorporate many of his ideas and ideals in his work.
As obstetrician Cliff Huxtable in The Cosby Show (1984–1992), he projected a new image of middle-class African-American families, and the programme was one of the most popular and lucrative in television history. His gentle, wry clowning appealed to both children and adults, leading to a series of successful TV commercials, comedy records, and books, and making him one of the wealthiest people in the history of the American entertainment industry. Only his films failed to be money-makers.
In later years, Cosby has become a generous contributor to various causes and institutions, particularly Atlanta's Spelman College, and is often seen at track-and-field meets for amateur athletes, to which he also contributes. In 2003 he was honoured with the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award.
Cosby married his wife Camille in 1964, and the couple had five children, Erika Ranee, Erinn Chalene, Ensa Camille, Evin Harrah and Ennis William. Tragically, Ennis was shot to death while changing a flat tire on the side of a Los Angeles freeway in 1997.Related Works
Films
1971 Hickey and Boggs
1974 Uptown Saturday Night
1975 Let's Do It Again
1977 A Piece of the Action
1978 California Suite
1981 The Devil and Max Devlin
1987 Leonard: Part VI
1990 Ghost Dad
1993 Meteor Man
1996 Jack
Television
1965–8 I Spy
1969 The Bill Cosby Special
1969–71 The Bill Cosby Show
1972–3 The New Bill Cosby Show
1972–84 Fat Albert and the Cosby
1984–92 The Cosby Show
1996 Cosby

Touré

Touré has written three books: The Portable Promised Land (2003), a collection of short stories, Soul City (2004), a magical realist novel about life in an African-American Utopia, and Never Drank the Kool-Aid (2006), a collection of his writing from Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, The New York Times, the Village Voice, The Believer, Playboy, TENNIS Magazine, and others, written between 1994 and 2005.In 1992, his junior year at Emory University, Touré dropped out of college and became an intern at Rolling Stone. He was fired after a few months but weeks later was asked to write record reviews and then feature stories. His first feature was about Run-DMC. Since 1997, he has been a Contributing Editor at Rolling Stone, writing primarily about hip hop. He has written cover stories about Alicia Keys, 50 Cent, Eminem, Beyoncé, DMX, Lauryn Hill, and, in December 2005, Jay-Z, a story called "The Book of Jay". He has also written about Dale Earnhardt Jr., a story that ended up in the Best American Sportswriting of 2001. He has often evoked the participatory journalism of George Plimpton or Tom Wolfe, while, for example, playing high-stakes poker with Jay-Z, two-on-two basketball with Prince, one-on-one basketball with Wynton Marsalis, tennis with Jennifer Capriati, or writing illegal graffiti with known graffiti artists.In 1996, upset that a feature story he'd written for The New Yorker was rejected, he enrolled in the graduate school for creative writing at Columbia University to learn more about non-fiction. He took a fiction writing class and wrote a story about a black saxophonist in Harlem named Sugar Lips Shinehot who loses the ability to see white people called "The Sad Sweet Story of Sugar Lips Shinehot and the Portable Promised Land". The second story he wrote, about a dangerously sexual preacher, was called "A Hot Time at the Church of Kentucky Fried Souls and the Spectacular Final Sunday Sermon of the Right Revren Daddy Love." After it won an award from the magazine Zoetrope: All-Story, he embarked on a fiction writing career.After a year at Columbia, Touré left to write a biography of rapper KRS-One. He traveled with KRS to London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and New Jersey, interviewing him for over a year until KRS abruptly shelved the project.

Omar Tyree

Omar Tyree, a New York Times best-selling author, a 2001 NAACP Image Award recipient for Outstanding Literature in Fiction, and a 2006 Phillis Wheatley Literary Award winner for Body of Work in Urban Fiction, has published 15 books and has sold more than 1.8 million copies worldwide. With a degree in Print Journalism from Howard University in 1991, Tyree has been recognized as one of the most renown contemporary writers in the African-American community. He is also an informed and passionate speaker on various community-related and in tellectual topics. Soon to enter the world of feature film making, self-help / business books, and urban children's books, Tyree is a tireless creator and visionary of few limitations.

Cornel West

West, Cornel (1953– )

Educator and philosopher, born in Sacramento, California, USA. Educated at Harvard and New York's Union Theological Seminary, he became a noted writer and speaker on what he called ‘prophetic pragmatism’, a philosophy that sought to fuse the life of the mind with public affairs in the areas of racial oppression, sexism, violence, and homophobia. His books include The American Evasion of Philosophy (1985) and Race Matters (1993). In 1988 he became director of the highly regarded African-American Studies programme at Princeton University.

Michael Baisden

The Bad Boy – Michael Baisden



When it comes to entertaining, enlightening and educating, no one in talk radio compares to Michael Baisden. His high-octane energy and love for interacting with his listeners is just one reason for the popularity and success of The Michael Baisden Show. The Bad Boy ignites heated discussions with explosive episodic themes like: Living Your Dream, Your Body Is Your Temple, and Pimps In The Pulpit.


His radio career began in 2003 when 98.7 KISS FM in New York City offered him a position as the afternoon drive-time host. Because of budget constraints the station was unable to offer him a salary. Michael’s response was, “Just give me the damned mic!” And sure enough, within six months, their afternoon drive ratings went from number 9 to number 1.


After eight months of consistent high ratings, Michael suggested taking his show national but management was apprehensive, suggesting that New York wasn’t ready. A few months later, Michael threatened to quit if management did not pursue a syndication deal. “There was no doubt in my mind that I could have one of the hottest shows on radio! I knew the impact it would have on people all across the country and I wasn’t taking no, for an answer,” Michael rebutted.


His vibrant personality on and off the air has made him a people magnet. He began attracting attention with primarily female followers as author and publisher of the highly successful provocative books: "Never Satisfied: How and Why Men Cheat", "Men Cry in the Dark","The Maintenance Man",and lastly "God’s Gift to Women". Two of his titles ultimately were adapted into stage plays.



But his proudest moment came on September 20, 2007, when he passionately and skillfully spearheaded the famous Jena 6 March in Jena, Louisiana. This historic and momentous occasion garnered tens of thousands citizens of all races to peacefully marched in support of six young men who have been unfairly treated by the justice system. In addition, he urged millions of listeners to wear black on September 20 in protest of unequal justice. The news traveled throughout the country, everyone wore black in support of the Jena 6, from college students of all races to corporate executives.



The Bad Boy continues to entertain, enlighten and educate as he pursues one of his first dreams, to host a Late Night Talk show. He got that chance in the fall of 2007, when he partnered with FarCor Productions and TV One to host “Baisden After Dark,” featuring comedian George Willborn and band leader Morris day. The show was a smash hit, breaking records for viewers on the black owned network.



Stay tuned ~ it’s just the beginning of the Bad Boy’s legacy.

Maya Angelou

Dr. Maya Angelou is a remarkable Renaissance woman who is hailed as one of the great voices of contemporary literature. As a poet, educator, historian, best-selling author, actress, playwright, civil-rights activist, producer and director, she continues to travel the world, spreading her legendary wisdom. Within the rhythm of her poetry and elegance of her prose lies Angelou's unique power to help readers of every orientation span the lines of race and Angelou captivates audiences through the vigor and sheer beauty of her words and lyrics.

Hill Harper, actor turned Writer

Harper was born in Iowa City, Iowa to Henry Harper, a psychiatrist, and Marilyn Hill, who was one of the first practicing African-American anesthesiologists in the United States. Acting since the age of 7, Harper graduated magna cum laude from Brown University with a Bachelor of Arts degree and graduated with a J.D. (cum laude) from Harvard Law School, where he earned his degree in law and Master of Public Administration. During his years at Harvard, he was a full-time member of Boston's Black Folks Theater Company, one of the oldest and most acclaimed African-American theater troupes in the country.