Bridgett M. Davis, Author, Professor, independent filmmaker

Bridgett M. Davis was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. She is a graduate of Spelman College in Atlanta, and Columbia University, where she received a MS in Journalism.

As an Associate Professor of English at Baruch College in New York, she teaches Creative Writing and Journalism.

She is also an independent filmmaker. Her award-winning feature film, Naked Acts, was theatrically released in 1998 and is now available on DVD and video nationwide. Touted by Variety as "fresh, funny and original," the drama about a young black actress' refusal to disrobe for the camera has screened in international festivals throughout the US, Europe, Brazil and Africa. Naked Acts has also aired on the premium cable Sundance Channel.

As an essayist, Davis' work has appeared in The Black Women's Health Book: Speaking For Ourselves, The Detroit Free Press, Venue Literary Magazine, and The Black Female Body in American Culture: Critical Essays. She has also written reviews, articles and profiles for a host of newspapers and journals, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Newsday, The Chicago Tribune, The Independent, Columbia Journalism Review, Black Film Review, The Wall Street Journal and The Atlanta Journal &Constitution.

Davis has been on the selection committee of film and screenplay competitions for New York Council of the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts and the Independent Feature Project; she is the recipient of a Brooklyn Arts Council award and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. Her short fiction is included in In The Tradition, an Anthology of Young Black Writers.

She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and son.

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Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks (May 3, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0060572507
ISBN-13: 978-0060572501
Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches

Not yet a woman yet more than a little girl, Rae Dodson is caught up in her family's drama. Her hip older sister, Kimmie, whom her mother favors, has moved from New Orleans to join them in Detroit, a city that moves as if in synch with the Stevie Wonder tunes that play giddily from new automobiles fresh off the factory lots. Her bid whist-playing mother is as nervous as ever, and her father's chronic migraines seem less responsive to medication. And while they all occupy the same house, they might as well be living separate lives. When the tenuous peace finally breaks, Rae must decide where her loyalties lie: should she choose her emotionally distant mother, whom she adores, or her affectionate but needy father? Rae does choose and launches into a rich, loving relationship with her dad, for whom she shows a fierce, undying loyalty. But as she matures, she must find a way amid her own budding sexuality to be both Daddy's girl and her own woman.

Naked Acts

"Naked Acts" is the debut feature by Bridgett M. Davis. The film traveled to over two dozen film festivals around the world and was released theatrically in New York City on September 25, 1998. In this scene, Cicely (Jake-ann Jones) informs her mother, Lydia (Patricia DeArcy) of her plans to become an actress.