Ebony's Patrice Peck pulled together this list of up-and-coming black wordsmiths — from journalists to poets to fiction writers — who are making their unique marks on the literary world. Here's just a little about who they are, why they write and why we should be reading them:
As a technology reporter for The New York Times, Jenna Wortham writes about mobile apps, Web start-ups, and everything in between. Prior to the Times, Wortham served as a technology and culture reporter for Wired.com. In-depth and comprehensible to even the most technologically-impaired, her writing has also appeared in print publications like Wired, Bust, and Frommer's. Yet her most distinctive work to date is Girl Crush, a zine launched by Wortham and Thessaly La Force that venerates inspirational women …
Like many of his twenty-something year-old peers, Rembert Browne started a blog, 500 Days Asunder, in 2011 to document his daily musings and to put his "creative juices" to practice. His exhilarating honesty coupled with his tangy wit and introspective rumination made for some of the best, most unique blog posts published in a while. Included in his most popular posts are "5 Black Comedians: A Study," "Top 10 Diddy Moments. Ever," and "Me vs. Drake" …
Since entering the selective stratosphere that is American theatre, the Brooklyn-based playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury's star has continued soaring to impressive heights. A 2012 New York Magazine article spotlighted her as one of the city's 10 playwrights to watch. Time spent at Brown University's MFA playwriting program resulted in her winning the David Wickham Prize in Playwriting and a Weston Award. Drury went on to write the award-winning play We Are Proud to Present a Presentation and receive multiple fellowships, including the inaugural Jerome New York Fellowship, which awarded her $50,000 towards producing new work and researching Morocco …
Otherwise known as Max, Uzoamaka Maduka's name has been plastered all over major New York City publications. More attention has been given to her socialite-like charisma than her literary journal, The American Reader. Nonetheless, the Nigerian-American Princeton graduate has been on a steadfast mission to revitalize the American literary magazine. "So many of the voices in fiction that are out there are deeply neurotic white male stories … I kind of felt like, I really don't want to sit still for this," Maduka told The New York Times …
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