Sinclair was raised on Chicago's South Side where one of her early messages must have been: If you want something, go for it. She earned her bachelor's degree at Western Illinois before moving to California where she worked as a community activist in Oakland for 15 years. She also took graduate courses at San Francisco State.

When she had written just 20 pages of her first novel, "Coffee Will Make You Black," she decided to give a public reading.

She called a bookstore and volunteered herself as a reader. The owner agreed. Sinclair then distributed hundreds of fliers and prepared for her first public reading. Talk about guts.

Now, anyone who has ever hosted a book-signing or reading will tell you that a dozen people is a good turnout. Thirty people is a great turnout. Anything over 50 is a smash hit and means you probably provided a lot of free food and a live band.

But more than 125 people came to this unknown, unpublished writer's first reading.

"It was very strange because I didn't have a book," admitted Sinclair, laughing at the joke of it all. "Something just told me to keep on going."

Sinclair said she called a women's book store for her reading and found support through the sisterhood. Additionally, she was then working as the director of an emergency food coalition in Oakland so people who knew her as a community activist turned out.

"I had a lot of contacts," she admitted. If there's one thing any community activist worth his or her salt can do, it's turn out a crowd.

"They didn't know I only had 20 pages written," said Sinclair, laughing again.

But the point is, it worked. Sinclair began getting calls from agents who heard about her successful reading and soon she had a contract to finish "Coffee Will Make You Black," the coming of age novel about a young black woman set in 1965-1970.

"I was popular during that period when I was reading my work," said Sinclair. "Now that I'm succeeding I'm unpopular again. I can't get a date."a

Above Interview Excerpted from:

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I Left My Back Door Open

(April 1999 - AALBC Best-Seller)

Publisher:  Hyperion
Date Published:  April 1999
Format:  Trade Cloth

"I am not young, or thin, or white, or beautiful,'' says the narrator of Sinclair's worldly-wise and entertaining new novel. Gun-shy after several catastrophic relationships, Chicago deejay Daphne (Dee Dee) Dupree is an outwardly successful African-American woman aching for self-realization. Sassy from the safety of her broadcasting booth, the heavy-set 41-year-old jauntily offers her weight as the cause of a recent breakup ("The brotha didn't 'preciate my meat"). In reality, Dee Dee struggles with the shame of being fat and bulimic. She yearns for mature love and the self-confidence she's sure will accompany finding the right man. Meanwhile, relationships she's relied on as stable fall into flux: the 20-year marriage of her high school friends Sarita and Phil is falling apart; her best friend, Sharon, has come bursting out of the closet, an enthusiastic lesbian at 40; Jade, her belly-dancing instructor and fellow deejay, is on the cusp of ending an unhappy marriage. Dee Dee's only constant is her cat, Langston. The mixed blessing of a sexual harassment suit at work brings union mediator Skylar into her life. Attraction notwithstanding, their romance is tentative and obstructed; his (white) ex-wife is trying to reconcile with him and his eight-year-old daughter relentlessly blocks her father's new interest. In the course of sorting all this out, Dee Dee takes stock and faces some long repressed childhood memories. Refreshingly upbeat and robustly spiritual, the novel steers clear of sentimental inspirational writing by means of its frank and funny dialogue.

Coffee Will Make You Black

Publisher:  Avon Books
Date Published:  January 1996
Format:  Trade Paper

Set on Chicago's Southside in the mid-to-late 60s, Coffee Will Make You Black is the moving and entertaining tale of Jean "Stevie" Stevenson, a young black woman growing up through the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. The novel opens at a time when, for black families, seeing a black person on television was an event; when expressions like "I don't want nothing black but a Cadillac" and "Coffee will make you black" were handed down from one generation to the next without comment. Stevie is a bookworm, yet she longs to fit in with the cool crowd. Fighting her mother every step of the way, she begins to experiment with talkin' trash, "kicking butt," and boys. With the assassination of Dr. King she gains a new political awareness, which makes her decide to wear her hair in a 'fro instead of straightened, to refuse to use skin bleach, and to confront the prejudice she observes in blacks as well as whites. April Sinclair writes frankly about a young black woman's sexuality, and about the confusion Stevie faces when she realizes she's more attracted to the school nurse - who is white - than her teenage boyfriend. As readers follow Stevie's at times harrowing, at times hilarious story, they will learn what it was like to be black before black was beautiful.

Ain't Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice

Publisher:  Avon Books
Date Published:  January 1997
Format:  Trade Paper

In her second novel, Ain't Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice, Stevie, an immensely appealing young African-American woman, is just graduating from college and is ready to expand her horizons. She goes to San Francisco with two friends as a post-graduation trip, and decides to stay when she realizes the city holds more promise for her than returning to her cramped room in her parents' house on Chicago's South Side. It was the best of times...if you knew where the party was. The year is 1975 - a time of one-night stands, disco, personal growth, and the height of the women's liberation movement - and Stevie dives into the scene. At a women's dance, she meets Traci, a cute, cinnamon-colored woman with attitude, who introduces her to yoga, hot tubs, and vegetarianism, and tells Stevie she "has enough tofu burgers in her freezer to last till we put a black woman in the White House." When their relationship becomes intimate, Stevie discovers a side to her nature that would make her mama's hair stand up. Soon, though, things with Traci go sour, and Stevie has to crash on the couch of a brand-new friend, a disco queen named Sterling. April Sinclair shows us Stevie's adventures in the go-with-the-flow atmosphere of Seventies San Francisco, with crackling dialogue and hilarious scenes that sparkle with authenticity.

El Cafe TE Hara Negro (in Spanish)

Publisher:  Planeta Publishing Corporation
Date Published:  June 1998
Format:  Trade Paper