Who are the prominent African American authors writing today?  Who are the authors the general public would know--even if they have never read the author's book?

 

There are a few conditions;

• The author must be alive and younger than 70.  So this rules out Maya Angelou and Tony Morrison
• The authors must be a novelist.  Everybody knows Steve Harvey, whose new book, Act Like a Success, Think Like a Success: Discovering Your Gift and the Way to Life’s Riches, will debut at #1 on the New York Times Bestsellers list, but I'm not interested in celebrities that have others writing their books.
• Again the author must be American.  Sure Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is world renown, but I'd like to focus on Black American writers for this thought experiment.

Among the many negative trends I see, as it relates to Black publishing, is the idea that we losing Black authors who are household names.  We just lost Angelou, Morrison is over 100 (just kidding), Alice Walker is 70.  Who is coming up behind these writers?

 

Even Terry McMillan is not as well recognized as she was a decade ago.  I can find Eric Jerome Dickey's book when I go into a Barnes & Noble, but the buzz surrounding a new release is not the same.  Zane and Kimberla Lawson Roby are very popular and of course we have Walter Mosley.  But none of these writers were ever as popular as Angelou, or Langston Hughes, or Jimmy Baldwin.

 

Perhaps the younger authors don't deserve to be.  But if you agree with that you have to believe there are some writers out there deserves to be as popular.  My concern is that we will never discover those wrters.

 

I tend to think the true problem is that there is much less on focus on books, literature, or even reading in the Black community.  When I look back and see articles like this, covering Black writers, in a commercial publication like Ebony Magazine, I know things have changed a great deal.  Can you image an article like that today?

 

Who are the prominent authors today?  Is the question even relevant?

 

Humm I may be living a literary bubble.  I took it for granted that Toni Morrison was universally known.  It does not appears that that is true today--ask around...