Joyce Angela Jellison

Last updated

Joyce Angela Jellison-Hounkanrin (born August 7, 1969) is an American author [1] living in New England. She is a graduate of Urban College of Boston and Bay Path College in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. She holds a J.D. degree from Massachusetts School of Law in Andover, Massachusetts. [2]

Contents

Early years

Joyce Angela Jellison was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the youngest of four children. [3] She attended Pennsylvania State University for a short time before leaving and joining the United States Army Reserve. Upon returning home from basic training, she attended the Art Institute of Philadelphia.

Newspaper career

Frustrated with her academic performance and taking the advice of a teacher to focus on writing, Jellison moved to New England. She was a stringer for a local newspaper, The Lynn Sunday Post. "I think I was the worst reporter there was," she says of this time. "I was definitely the hungriest and took any story that came my way. I hung around a lot and as a result I stumbled on some great stories. I did not know anything about journalism. I got that job with an essay I wrote at home and an article from a high school news project."

In 1999, she graduated from Urban College of Boston, a two-year college. She moved to Lenoir, North Carolina, where she was hired by the Lenoir News-Topic as a business writer. That year she won the 1999 North Carolina Press Association Award for News Enterprise Journalism for her stories about life in prison and an Associated Press Citation for her work during the criminal trial of Robert Frederick Glass, a man convicted of murdering Sharon Lopatka, a Maryland woman.

"It was my first exposure to daily news," Jellison says. "I learned as I wrote and I managed to focus on stories that were of interest to me. I learned I had a taste for uncovering social injustices and this is what I did or tried to do. At the same time, I was battling the good ole boy mentality that exists in America's newsrooms. I was the only black and the only woman at a lot of these newspapers and it was a constant challenge."

After nearly a year at the News-Topic, Jellison was hired as a crime reporter for the Hickory Daily Record . In 2000, she was awarded the Media General Award for Journalism Excellence for her story about AIDS in prison, the article was picked up by the Associated Press, and highlighted the need for more intensive medical care and HIV education in the North Carolina Prison System.

Jellison also wrote an article for Poz magazine, "Hair Come the Condoms", which detailed the efforts of hairstylists in Durham, North Carolina, to educate their customers on the importance of using condoms to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

In addition to her stories focusing on HIV and AIDS, Jellison wrote articles on North Carolina's Death Row. Motivated by her need to cover larger stories, she accepted a job as a city government reporter for the Charlotte Leader, in Charlotte, North Carolina. In 2002, she would move to Elizabeth City, North Carolina, to work as a layout editor for the Daily Advance.

"I think I have worked in every capacity possible in a newsroom," Jellison has said. "The one thing I did not like was editing. It was like being trapped in a cage. I would read stories and knew I could write them better or at least ask the questions that were not be asked."

Poet

Jellison moved back to Boston in 2005. Since her return she has transitioned from journalism to performing her poetry as a spoken-word artist in various venues in the New England area such as the famed Lizard Lounge and Cantab Lounge in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her work has been featured in The Daily News Tribune , The Boston Globe and The MetroWest Daily News . She has said she does not miss journalism and enjoys the freedom of being a freelance writer. She is a staff writer for Hapalife.com, an online magazine examining race and identity.

Jellison has also been publicly forthcoming on her battle with bipolar disorder. "It is not something I could hide," she has said. "I mean there were times when it was obvious I was balancing the reality in my head and the place in which my body exists. If someone ever asked I never lied - but most people were afraid to ask or it didn't matter. As long as I produced the stories it didn't matter to most editors."

She is the author of Where Everything Fits Beautifully, released on April 11, 2007, Black Apple, a collection of poems, short stories, and essays released in August 2008, and Tongue (2010). Her work has been compared to that of Lucille Clifton and Nikki Giovanni. In 2018, Ms. Hounkanrin published her The Girl with Moons in her Braids, a children's book about an Afro-Latina girl living in the Bronx. That work was followed by When They Split My Soul Flowers Burst Forth (2020) and Pretty Little Cannibals (2023).

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angela Bassett</span> American actress (born 1958)

Angela Evelyn Bassett is an American actress. Known for her work in film and television since the 1980s, she has received various accolades, including two Golden Globe Awards, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards and eight Primetime Emmy Awards. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2023, and she was chosen to receive an Academy Honorary Award in 2023.

<i>The Liberator</i> (newspaper) American abolitionist newspaper (1831–1865)

The Liberator (1831–1865) was a weekly abolitionist newspaper, printed and published in Boston by William Lloyd Garrison and, through 1839, by Isaac Knapp. Religious rather than political, it appealed to the moral conscience of its readers, urging them to demand immediate freeing of the slaves ("immediatism"). It also promoted women's rights, an issue that split the American abolitionist movement. Despite its modest circulation of 3,000, it had prominent and influential readers, including all the abolitionist leaders, among them Frederick Douglass, Beriah Green, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, and Alfred Niger. It frequently printed or reprinted letters, reports, sermons, and news stories relating to American slavery, becoming a sort of community bulletin board for the new abolitionist movement that Garrison helped foster.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Howie Carr</span> American journalist and political commentator (born 1952)

Howard Louis Carr Jr. is an American conservative radio talk-show host, political author, news reporter and award-winning writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lesley Stahl</span> American journalist

Lesley Rene Stahl is an American television journalist. She has spent most of her career with CBS News, where she began as a producer in 1971. Since 1991, she has reported for CBS's 60 Minutes. She is known for her news and television investigations and award-winning foreign reporting. For her body of work she has earned various journalism awards including a Lifetime Achievement News and Documentary Emmy Award in 2003 for overall excellence in reporting.

<i>The Paper</i> (film) 1994 US comedy-drama film by Ron Howard

The Paper is a 1994 American comedy-drama film directed by Ron Howard and starring Michael Keaton, Glenn Close, Marisa Tomei, Randy Quaid and Robert Duvall. It received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song for "Make Up Your Mind", which was written and performed by Randy Newman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suzanne Malveaux</span> American journalist (born 1966)

Suzanne Maria Malveaux is an American broadcast journalist. After joining CNN from NBC News in 2002, she co-anchored the CNN international news program Around the World and editions of CNN Newsroom and also served as the network's White House correspondent and as primary substitute to Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room. She departed the network in 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joyce Brabner</span> American writer and artist

Joyce Brabner is an American writer of political comics and the widow of Harvey Pekar.

Margaret Louise Coit was a writer of American history books for both adults and children. In 1935 when she was still in high school in Greensboro, North Carolina, Coit—like many people in the South at that time—venerated John C. Calhoun. In her eyes his life was heroic. Calhoun was "a congressman and vice president under two presidents" and "later a symbol of the lost cause of defending slavery." After studying journalism and history for several years at the Woman's College at Greensboro, she worked for many years researching Calhoun's life, resulting in the publication of her Pulitzer Prize-winning book entitled John C. Calhoun, American Portrait.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nancy Hicks Maynard</span> American journalist and publisher (1946–2008)

Nancy Alene Hicks Maynard was an American publisher, journalist, former owner of The Oakland Tribune, and co-founder of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. She was the first African-American female reporter for The New York Times, and at the time of her death, The Oakland Tribune was the only metropolitan daily newspaper to have been owned by African Americans. She was a pioneering advocate for diversifying newsrooms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carol Rosenberg</span> American journalist

Carol Rosenberg is a senior journalist at The New York Times. Long a military-affairs reporter at the Miami Herald, from January 2002 into 2019 she reported on the operation of the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camps, at its naval base in Cuba. Her coverage of detention of captives at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp has been praised by her colleagues and legal scholars, and in 2010 she spoke about it by invitation at the National Press Club. Rosenberg had previously covered events in the Middle East. In 2011, she received the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for her nearly decade of work on the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Randi Kaye</span> American television news journalist

Randi Kaye is an American television news journalist for CNN. She is based in New York and is currently serving as an investigative reporter for Anderson Cooper 360°.

Etheleen Renee Shipp is an American journalist and columnist. As a columnist for the New York Daily News, she was awarded the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for "her penetrating columns on race, welfare and other social issues."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Cohen (journalist)</span> American journalist and professor

Sarah Cohen is an American journalist, author, and professor. Cohen is a proponent of, and teaches classes on, computational journalism and authored the book "Numbers in the Newsroom: Using math and statistics in the news."

Lizette Alvarez is an American journalist, and has worked for more than two decades with The New York Times. She has served as the Miami bureau chief since January 2011. Alvarez has been a reporter for the New York Daily News, and TheMiami Herald.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sara Ganim</span> American journalist

Sara Elizabeth Ganim is an American journalist and podcast host. She is the current Hearst Journalism Fellow at the University of Florida's Brechner Center for Freedom of Information and the James Madison Visiting Professor on First Amendment Issues at the Columbia Journalism School. Previously, she was a correspondent for CNN. In 2011 and 2012, she was a reporter for The Patriot-News, a daily newspaper in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. There she broke the story that featured the Sandusky scandal and the Second Mile charity. For the Sandusky/Penn State coverage, "Sara Ganim and members of The Patriot-News Staff" won a number of national awards including the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, making Ganim the third-youngest winner of a Pulitzer. The award cited "courageously revealing and adeptly covering the explosive Sandusky sex scandal involving former football coach Jerry Sandusky."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nikole Hannah-Jones</span> American journalist (born 1976)

Nikole Sheri Hannah-Jones is an American investigative journalist, known for her coverage of civil rights in the United States. She joined The New York Times as a staff writer in April 2015, was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2017, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2020 for her work on The 1619 Project. Hannah-Jones is the inaugural Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at the Howard University School of Communications, where she also founded the Center for Journalism and Democracy.

Angela Bowen was an American dance teacher, English professor, writer, and a lesbian rights activist. She was also the subject of an award-winning 2016 documentary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">State House News Service</span> News wire

The State House News Service is an independent, privately owned news wire service that has been providing in-depth coverage of Massachusetts state government since 1894. It provides a continuous daily feed of news stories about state-government issues and events, supplemented by photos, audio and video. It is also the only news outlet with floor privileges in the Massachusetts House and Senate chambers, where SHNS reporters cover every session from desks near the rostrums.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keri Blakinger</span> Criminal justice journalist (born 1984)

Keri Lynn Blakinger is an American journalist and author. She is an investigative reporter for The Marshall Project, where she covers criminal justice. As a child, she competed as a figure skater at regional and national levels, first in singles and then in pair skating with Mark Ladwig. She struggled with bulimia during her competitions and, after her skating career ended, she developed a drug addiction in high school and college. She continued to deal with this and other problems while attending Rutgers University and later Cornell University before being arrested in December 2010 for possession of heroin.

William John Woestendiek Jr. was an American journalist and author. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 1987 for articles "which included proving the innocence of a man convicted of murder". After retiring from journalism, he started a blog, Ohmidog!, which focused on the relationships between people and their canine companions. Woestendiek wrote two non-fiction books: Dog, Inc.: The Uncanny Story of Cloning Man’s Best Friend and Travels With Ace.

References

  1. Jellison, Joyce Angela (2007). Where Everything Fits Beautifully. Booksurge. ISBN   978-1419663987.
  2. Joyce Angela Jellison-Hounkanrin, "The letter of the law is black, but the color of law is white" [ permanent dead link ], LexInsight Blog, June 13, 2018.
  3. Talia Whyte, "Local poet strives to amplify the voices of black women", The Bay State Banner, January 7, 2009.