Writer's Digest Popular Fiction Awards
Deadline: November 2, 2010
Enter: the black Malibu beach Ken dolls.
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Tayari Jones was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia where she spent most of her childhood with the exception of the one year she and her family spent in Nigeria, West Africa. Although she has not lived in her hometown for over a decade, much of her writing centers on the urban south. “Although I now live in the northeast,” she explains, “my imagination lives in Atlanta.”
Her first novel, Leaving Atlanta, is a coming of age story set during the city’s infamous child murders of 1979-81. Jones herself was in the fifth grade when thirty African American children were murdered from the neighborhoods near her home and school. When asked why she chose this subject matter for her first novel, she says, “This novel is my way of documenting a particular moment in history. It is a love letter to my generation and also an effort to remember my own childhood. To remind myself and my readers what it was like to been eleven and at the mercy of the world. And despite the obvious darkness of the time period, I also wanted to remember all that is sweet about girlhood, to recall all the moments that make a person smile and feel optimistic.”
In February, Essence covered the front of the magazine with Reggie Bush for its "Live your Fantasy" cover story featuring "10 of the sexiest men you've ever seen." That cover attracted far more attention than the editors ever expected. They got a boatload of letters like this one from a Baltimore reader..."I am saddened that ESSENCE chose to highlight Reggie Bush. There are so many other Black men, dating Black women, who would have made a great cover. This issue left a bitter taste in my mouth."
Although all of the feedback was not from people who had a problem with the magazine
highlighting interracial relationships, that discussion does continue into the March Issue with the On Her Mind column, "Why it still hurts when a Black man chooses a woman from another race."
Essence magazine-endorsed Orange Mint and Honey was published in February of 2008, but a little research shows me that Carleen Brice has been on the scene for quite a while, having both fiction and non-fiction titles to her credit that date back to 2003, perhaps earlier.
s there pressure to pick a book that absolutely everyone will love? Not really. We are a group of nine very different women, ten if you count the guest reader of the month. Chances are, not everyone will love every selection. Has it ever happened that everyone (finished) and was in love with the book of the month? Yes, I think I recall that happening once or twice. Then there were the times when the individual ratings for a selection (we give books one to five gems; one being "poor" and five being "excellent") have ranged from "4.75 gems--let's read it again") to "let's torture the member who chose that one."
