Jewell Parker Rhodes (1954- )

Jewell Parker Rhodes (1954- )

Jewell Parker Rhodes is an accomplished novelist, nonfiction writer, and professor who was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1954.  Raised in Pittsburgh, Rhodes moved to California with relatives when she was eight but returned to her home town to begin college at...
Gayl Jones (1949- )

Gayl Jones (1949- )

The novelist and poet Gayl Jones was born November 23, 1949 in Lexington, Kentucky.  She came from a creative background; her grandmother Amanda Wilson wrote religious dramas and her mother Lucile wrote fiction.  By the time she was seven years old, she had already...
Peter Abrahams (1919-2017)

Peter Abrahams (1919-2017)

Twentieth century African novelist and journalist Peter Henry Abrahams was born in Vrededorp (near Johannesburg), South Africa, on March 19, 1919. Abrahams’ father, James Henry Abrahams Deras was the son of former Ethiopian landowners who had taken him across Europe...
Leymah Gbowee (1972- )

Leymah Gbowee (1972- )

Leymah Gbowee, Liberian peace activist, author, and 2011 Nobel Prize winner was born on February 1, 1972. She grew up in Bong County in central Liberia. In 1990, when Leymah was 17, she left for the capital, Monrovia, just before the nearly decade-old civil war...