Zora Neale Hurston was an American author, anthropologist, and documentary filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-20th-century American South and published research on hoodoo and Caribbean Vodou. The most popular of her four novels is Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. She also wrote more than 50 short stories, plays, and essays.
Ralph Ellison was an American writer, literary critic, and scholar best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953.
Zadie Smith FRSL is an English novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her debut novel, White Teeth (2000), immediately became a best-seller and won a number of awards. She became a tenured professor in the Creative Writing faculty of New York University in September 2010.
Ishmael Scott Reed is an American poet, novelist, essayist, songwriter, composer, playwright, editor and publisher known for his satirical works challenging American political culture. Perhaps his best-known work is Mumbo Jumbo (1972), a sprawling and unorthodox novel set in 1920s New York.
Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead is an American novelist. He is the author of nine novels, including his 1999 debut The Intuitionist; The Underground Railroad (2016), for which he won the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; and The Nickel Boys, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction again in 2020, making him one of only four writers ever to win the prize twice. He has also published two books of nonfiction. In 2002, he received a MacArthur Fellowship.
Percival Everett is an American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. He has described himself as 'pathologically ironic' and has played around with numerous genres such as western fiction, mysteries, thrillers, satire and philosophical fiction. His books are often satirical, aimed at exploring race and identity issues in the United States.
John F. Callahan is the literary executor for Ralph Ellison, and was the editor for his posthumously-released novel Juneteenth. In addition to his work with Ellison, Callahan has written or edited numerous volumes related to African-American literature, with a particular emphasis on 20th century literature.
Mat Johnson is an American fiction writer who works in both prose and the comics format. In 2007, he was named the first USA James Baldwin Fellow by United States Artists.
The Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards program in the United States honors published Black writers worldwide for literary achievement. Introduced in 2001, the Legacy Award was the first national award presented to Black writers by a national organization of Black writers. It is granted for fiction, nonfiction and poetry, selected in a juried competition.
Uwem Akpan is a Nigerian writer. He is known as the author of Say You're One of Them (2008), a collection of five stories published by Little, Brown & Company. His debut book achieved international success.
Darryl Pinckney is an American novelist, playwright, and essayist.
Zelda Lockhart is a contemporary African-American writer, speaker, teacher and researcher. Her latest novel Trinity was published in July 2023. She is the director of LaVenson Press and Her Story Garden Studios. Her recent books include Diamond Doris: The True Story of the World’s Most Notorious Jewel Thief by Doris Payne with Zelda Lockhart (2019), and 20/20: A Living & Learning poetry collection (2017). She is the author of three novels: Fifth Born (2003), Cold Running Creek (2006), and Fifth Born II: The Hundredth Turtle (2010). Her first novel was published to critical acclaim and was a finalist for an award—for a debut novel—from the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Foundation. Her novels emphasize the struggles, sexual trauma, and triumphs of African and Native American women historically and contemporarily. Her research focuses on inquiries into intergenerational healing and the ways creating personal experience-based literature while consuming personal experience-based literature has the potential to be emotionally, psychologically, and socially transformative for individuals. Areas of interest are Black women and girls, Native populations, people of color, LGBT individuals and financially disenfranchised people. In her position as director of LaVenson Press and Her Story Garden Studios, Lockhart seeks to create a space where women can "self-define through writing and publishing." She is currently Associate Professor of Creative Writing and African American Literature at North Carolina Central University.
Chinelo Okparanta is a Nigerian-American novelist and short-story writer. She was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, where she was raised until the age of 10, when she emigrated to the United States with her family.
I Am Not Sidney Poitier (2009) is a novel by American writer Percival Everett. Originally published by Graywolf Press, in 2020, it was published by Influx Press in the UK. It explores the tumultuous life of a character named Not Sidney Poitier as the social hierarchy scrambles to balance his skin color with his wealth.
Mitchell S. Jackson is an American writer. He is the author of the 2013 novel The Residue Years, as well as Oversoul (2012), an ebook collection of essays and short stories. Jackson is a Whiting Award recipient and a former winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. In 2021, while an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Chicago, he won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing for his profile of Ahmaud Arbery for Runner's World. As of 2021, Jackson is the John O. Whiteman Dean's Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at Arizona State University.
Bernice L. McFadden is an American novelist. She has also written humorous erotica under the pseudonym Geneva Holliday. Author of fifteen novels, she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Tulane University in New Orleans.
Marc Anthony Richardson is an American novelist and artist. He won an American Book Award and a Creative Capital Award.
The Trees is a 2021 novel by American author Percival Everett, published by Graywolf Press.
American Fiction is a 2023 American black comedy-drama film written and directed by Cord Jefferson in his feature directorial debut. Based on the 2001 novel Erasure by Percival Everett, it follows a frustrated novelist-professor who writes an outlandish satire of stereotypical "Black" books, only for it to be mistaken for serious literature and published to high sales and critical praise. It stars Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae, Sterling K. Brown, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Leslie Uggams, Adam Brody and Keith David.
American Fiction is the soundtrack to the 2023 film of the same name directed by Cord Jefferson, based on the 2001 novel Erasure by Percival Everett. The film's musical score composed by Laura Karpman featured 21 tracks from the film score for around 47 minutes. The soundtrack was released by Sony Masterworks on December 15, 2023, alongside the film.
