17 | October | 2013 | John F. Allen Author

TODAY’S BLACK SPECULATIVE FICTION MONTH SPOTLIGHT IS TANANARIVE DUE!

Tananarive Due

Tananarive Due is an American author and educator born in Tallahassee, Florida. She is the oldest of three daughters of civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due and civil rights lawyer John D. Due Jr. Tananarive was named her after the French name for Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. She went on to earn a B.S. in journalism from Northwestern University and an M.A. in English literature, with an emphasis on Nigerian literature, from the University of Leeds. While studying at Northwestern, Due lived in the Communications Residential College.

Tananarive serves as the Cosby Chair for the Humanities at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia where she resides. She has written a dozen supernatural suspense novels, including the African Immortals series that began with “My Soul to Keep.” Tananarive won an American Book Award for her supernatural thriller “The Living Blood”, and along with her husband, science fiction author, Steven Barnes, won an NAACP Image Award for the mystery novel “In the Night of the Heat.” Barnes was co-author of the novel and they both worked in collaboration with actor Blair Underwood.

Due worked as a journalist/columnist for the Miami Herald when she wrote her first novel, “The Between,” in 1995. This, like many of her subsequent books, was part of the supernatural genre. Due has also written “The Black Rose”, historical fiction about Madame C. J. Walker (based in part on research conducted by legendary author, Alex Haley (prior to his death) and “Freedom in the Family”, a non-fiction work about the civil rights struggle she co-authored with her mother, Patricia Stephens Due.

She also was one of the contributors to the humor novel, “Naked Came The Manatee”, in which various Miami area authors each contributed chapters to a mystery/thriller parody. Due is also the author of the “African Immortals” novel series and the Tennyson Hardwick novels.

Tananarive is a member of the affiliate faculty in the creative writing MFA program at Antioch University Los Angeles.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Speculative fiction novels

The Between (1995)
The Good House (2003)
Joplin’s Ghost (2005)

African Immortals Series

My Soul to Keep (1997)
The Living Blood (2001)
Blood Colony (2008)
My Soul To Take (2011)

Mysteries

Naked Came the Manatee (1996) (contributor)

The Tenneyson Hardwick novels

Casanegra (2007; with Steven Barnes & Blair Underwood)
In the Night of the Heat (2008; Steven Barnes & Blair Underwood)
From Cape Town with Love (2010; Steven Barnes & Blair Underwood)
South by Southeast (2012; Steven Barnes & Blair Underwood)

Short Stories

“Like Daughter”, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (2000)
“Patient Zero”, The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection (2001)
“Trial Day”, Mojo: Conjure Stories (2003)
“Afternoon”, Dark Matter: Reading the Bones (2004)
“Senora Suerte”, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (September 2006)

Other works

The Black Rose, historical fiction featuring Madam C.J. Walker (2000)
Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights (2003) (with Patricia Stephens Due)

BE SURE TO HELP CELEBRATE BLACK SPECULATIVE FICTION MONTH BY CHECKING OUT THE WORK(S) OF THIS WONDERFUL WRITER & REMEMBER TBIYTC!!!

TODAY’S BLACK SPECULATIVE FICTION MONTH SPOTLIGHT IS CORY WILLIAMS!

Cory Williams

A native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Cory attended the Philadelphia High
School for the Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA), enrolling in the school’s first
year hen it was a fledgling program, where he majored in Creative Writing and
minored in Videodrama, becoming an award-winning director of video projects.
In addition, he was a founder, writer, and cartoonist for CAPA’s newspaper THE
PAINTED WORD, for which he eventually became editor-in-chief. Listed in
WHO’S WHO AMONG AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS and
commended by the National Honors Society, he graduated with CAPA’s second
graduating class in 1981.
Attending STANFORD UNIVERSITY in Stanford, California, where he majored in
Drama and minored in Dance, Cory performed in an average of five to six major
productions per year. He taught art to autistic, learning-disabled, and educable
mentally retarded children at the Peninsula Children’s Center in Menlo Park,
California, was active in the Stanford University Rape Awareness Program,
occasionally wrote for THE STANFORD DAILY, and toured for two years with the
BALLET FOLKLORICO DE STANFORD MEXICAN FOLKDANCE COMPANY.
He received a Bachelors of Arts Degree in Drama in 1986.
As a performing artist, Cory has performed in dance productions, touring shows,
and Off-Broadway productions of ANTIGONE, THE TRIAL OF SUSAN B.
ANTHONY, WE HAVE STORIES TO TELL OF AFRICA, FRATERNITY, NOTES
ON 6FINITY, THE AMEN CORNER, and A FEW HOURS IN HELL, making his
West Coast theatrical debut as the Duke of Cornwall in KING LEAR with the
Pasadena Shakespeare Company in Pasadena, California, following that up as a
member of the ensemble cast of the Fountain Theatre/BAND critically-acclaimed
production of Rita Dove’s THE DARKER FACE OF THE EARTH, then
continuing on to the West Coast premiere of the VoxBox Arts Collective original
production of JIGSAW. In addition, Cory has acted in various commercials,
industrial films and videos, television shows, and feature films such as WHO
SHOT PAT?, PHILADELPHIA, LET’S TALK, THE C-SHIFT, REFLECTIONS
AGO, RED HERRING, FIGHTING WORDS, A DAY OF ATONEMENT and
STRAIGHT ON ‘TIL MORNING.

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Cory is also the author of three science fiction novels, TOTENTANZ, THE
TAKING OF CYNDRIEL’S HOPE and HUNTER’S MOON, all of which are
currently available through the online content marketplace http://www.lulu.com.
Cory Williams is currently living and working in Los Angeles, California.