Black Silk (47 page)

Margaret Johnson-Hodge
is the author of five novels: The Real Deal, A New Day, Warm Hands, Butterscotch Blues, and Some Sunday.

Travis Hunter
, a native South Carolinian, is a novelist, songwriter, and father. He is the author of the novel
Hearts of Men.
He lives in Stone Mountain, Georgia, with his son, Rashad.

Jennifer Jazz
blends narrative and visual art in
Bronx Brazil,
a book funded by the Bronx Council on the Arts. It can be found in the Dia Center for the Arts’ Printed Matter Collection
in New York.

Robin Coste Lewis
teaches fiction writing at Hampshire College. Her writing has appeared in
The Massachusetts Review, The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review,
and
GCN: A Queer Progressive Quarterly.
Her academic work explores the probable impact of censorship on African-American women writing about sex in the United States
during the twenties. She is currently completing a collection of short stories,
Telling the Truth About My Experiences as a Body.
The story included here, “Sausage Boy,” was written specifically for an OUTWRITE conference panel. Her goal was to write
something lewd and lyrical while making as much mischief as possible.

devorah major
works in the Poets-in-the-Schools program in California. She is the author of the novel
An Open Weave
along with
Street Smarts: Poems,
which won a PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award for excellence in literature.

Janet McDonald
is the author of the memoir
Project Girl
— a finalist for the New Visions Award. A Brooklyn girl who works as an international corporate lawyer in France, she is
also the author of the young-adult novel
Spellbound
and currently at work on a sequel to her memoir, to be titled
Paris Girl.

Bernice L. McFadden
is the author of the Blackboard best-seller
Sugar
and the critically acclaimed sophomore effort
The Warmest December.
Toni Morrison has described her work as “riveting.” McFadden lives in Brooklyn, where she was also born and raised.

Kim McLarin
is the author of the novels
Taming It Down
and
Meeting of the Waters.

Kathleen Morris
is the author of
Speaking in Whispers: Lesbian African-American Erotica.
A follow-up collection is forthcoming. Morris’s writing has also appeared in
Best Lesbian Erotica
and several magazines, including
Venus, Women in the Life,
and
Mosaic.
Morris, a native of Mount Vernon, New York, now living in Maryland also facilitates the Erotica Pen, a national workshop
series designed to encourage women to discover their creative and sensual powers through the art of writing.

Bruce Morrow
is coeditor of the anthology
Shade
(Avon Books) and an associate editor of
Callaloo: A Journal of African American, African and African Diaspora Arts and Letters.
A recipient of a Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center Fellowship for Young African-American Fiction Writers, his work
has appeared in numerous publications, including the
New York Times, Speak My Name: Black Masculinity and the American Dream, Men on Men 2000,
and
Step into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature.
He lives in New York City and is at work on a novel.

Andrew Oyefesobi
, a native of Daytona Beach by way of Nigerian parents, was voted Prom King and Most Likely to Succeed in
high school. He discovered the power and sex appeal of writing while interning at a Beverly Hills talent agency and has been
writing ever since. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from Stanford; his work has appeared in
Vibe.
Oyefesobi is the founder of Urban Prince Publishing and the author of the spicy novel
Sin in Soul’s Kitchen.

Elissa G. Perry’
s short fiction has appeared in the anthologies Girlfriend Number One and Beyond Definition: New Writing from
Gay and Lesbian San Francisco. Her story “Revelation” is excerpted from Ephermeris, a novel in progress. She lives in Santa
Monica, California.

Jacqueline Powell
is the author of
Someone to Catch My Drift.
She currently resides in St. Louis, Missouri, where she is working on her second novel.

Kiini Ibura Salaam
is a writer, painter, and world traveler from New Orleans. Her short stories and essays have been anthologized
in
Dark Eros, Dark Matter,
and
Men We Cherish,
and included in
African American Review, Essence,
and other national publications. She is currently writing a novel,
Bloodlines,
and a collection of erotica entitled
Lust Heals.
She lives in Brooklyn.

s smith
is a recipient of a Serpent Source Foundation grant, awarded to outstanding artists who are women of color. She has
twice participated in the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Writer’s Week. s smith currently resides in Oakland,
California, where she is working on a collection of poetry.

Camika Spencer
is a native of Dallas, Texas, who was a bookseller at Black Images before she became a writer. After writing
two novels that went unpublished by traditional venues, she wrote a third and published it herself. akimac publishing made
such an impression in Dallas that
When All Hell Breaks Loose
was picked up by a major publishing house and became a Blackboard best-seller.

TaRessa Stovall
coauthored
A Love Supreme: Real-Life Stories of Black Love.
TaRessa, a native of Seattle, has been a writer since age seven. Her poetry has won awards and appeared in national magazines.
Her plays have been produced throughout the Pacific Northwest and in Chicago. TaRessa is coauthor of
Catching Good Health: An Introduction to Homeopathic Medicine
and author of the young-adult book
The Buffalo Soldiers.

Cheo Tyehimba
is an award-winning journalist and former senior editor and staff reporter of
Code
and
Entertainment Weekly
magazines, respectively. He has written for the
Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, Vibe, People,
and
George,
among other publications. He is working on
Carving from the Rock,
a novel excerpted here.

Carl Weber
wears the two hats of bookseller and writer. Shortly after he was awarded the Blackboard Bookseller of the Year
Award in 2000, he published his first novel,
Lookin’ for Luv.
He is also the author of the novel
Married Men.

Krystal G. Williams
was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1965. She received her undergraduate degree from Rice University
in Houston, Texas, where she double-majored in English and legal studies. She is currently a full-time technical writer and
mother of two. Her motto—”Too many words, not enough paper”—has helped her publish several romance novels, a play for her
alma mater, and a planning guide for family reunions. She currently makes her home in Texas.

Jacqueline Woodson
is the award-winning author of many novels and picture books for young readers, including the Maizon trilogy,
The Other Side, Lena, I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This
(a Coretta Scott King Honor Book),
The House You Pass on the Way, From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun, If You Come Softly,
and
Miracle’s Boys
(also an Honor Book). Among her other titles are
Autobiography of a Family Photo: A Novel
and the anthology
A Way Out of No Way: Writings about Growing Up Black in America.

Bil Wright
, recipient of a Millay Fellowship, is a fiction writer, playwright, and poet. His debut novel,
Sunday You Learn How to Box,
was published to much acclaim. His fiction and poetry have appeared in
Men on Men 3, The Road Before Us, Shade,
and many other anthologies. His plays have been produced in the United States and Germany and published in the anthology
Tough Acts to Follow.
He lives in New York City.

__________

Retha Powers is a writer and editor whose journalism and essays have appeared in national publications such as
USA Today, Essence, Glamour, Ms.,
and the anthology
Skin Deep: Black Women and White Women Write About Race.
She serves as executive editor of Quality Paperback Book Club, a division of Bookspan, and lives in New York City.

__________

The editor wishes to express gratitude to the writers herein who conjured up passionate and thoughtful tales told through
the lens of the erotic. She also wishes to thank her agent, Neeti Madan, for her tremendous support and friendship, and her
editors Amy Einhorn and Sandra Bark. Kathleen Morris’s referrals to many fine writers and the creative input of Christopher
Nickelson were also invaluable.