![]() ![]() They said he was stabbed, but I believe there’s dishonesty in some of those records. “There were so many times I wished I could change the history of the real-life Robert Stephens, dying so young in an unmarked grave at that horrible place. Her sadness at the loss - and the missed opportunity - is palpable during our conversation. “We never had a chance to talk about what happened,” to the great-uncle who died at the Dozier School in 1937, Due says. Inspired by the real-life loss of a relative in the 1930s at Florida’s infamous Dozier School for Boys, also the basis for Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “ The Nickel Boys,” Due started the novel shortly after her mother’s death. ![]() “My mother told me that, in the 1960s, the NAACP put a lot of thought and effort into establishing the Beverly Hills/Hollywood branch because they understood then the importance of representation, which was another front in the battle for civil rights.” In 2009, “Blood Colony,” the third book in what had become the African Immortals series, was nominated for an NAACP Image Award.ĭue was by then no stranger to accolades, but this nod marked another turning point. Two years later, she followed with “My Soul to Keep,” the story of David Wolde, a 500-year-old African immortal who’s conflicted about his need to protect his identity, which would mean abandoning his human family. Nine months later, inspired by the notion that horror fiction could speak to life’s greatest challenges, Due finished “The Between,” a novel about a man whose belief that his near-death experiences have put him in a state of limbo almost destroys his marriage. The article also stated that Due had won an NAACP Image Award. 26, 2023 An earlier version of this article stated that Tananarive Due and husband-writing partner Steven Barnes are back in the writers room working on “Crystal Lake.” The two have wrapped work on the film. “While admiring Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’ got me praise in my writing classes,” she remembers, leaning into the camera for emphasis, “liking Stephen King got me raised eyebrows.”ġ0:55 a.m. Writing mattered to my mother.”īut during her undergraduate studies at Northwestern University, Due received mixed messages about what kind of writing mattered. “Even before I was published, my mother would buy me ‘ The Writer’s Market’ every year as a birthday present. “I had the unwavering support of my parents, especially my mother,” Due says. Due Jr., now 88, was a civil rights attorney. As she speaks over Zoom from her home office in Upland about her three decades as a journalist and writer, a poster looms over her shoulder: the cover of “ Freedom in the Family,” a 2003 memoir she wrote with her mother, Patricia Stephens Due, a civil rights activist who died in 2012. While Due is a trailblazer in Black horror, she thinks often of other pioneers. ![]() “But I came back to that book and read one of her earlier novels, ‘ My Soul to Keep,’ to help define what I was looking for when I wanted to publish horror by looking at its recent past.” ![]() “Of course, I was aware of Tananarive as a towering presence in the horror community and had read ‘ The Good House’ years before,” he said in an email. Monti had been on the lookout for BIPOC voices within horror for a few years. On top of that, she’s about to publish her second book of the year, “ The Reformatory,” a coming-of-age novel about the horrors faced by Black and white children at an infamous Florida juvenile correctional facility. She’s supplemented her April short story collection, “ The Wishing Pool,” with a new story for an anthology out this month, “ Out There Screaming,” which was curated with an introduction by Peele. (They wrapped work in the writers room on “Crystal Lake,” Bryan Fuller’s eagerly anticipated prequel to the “Friday the 13th” franchise, just before the strike). With the WGA strike settled, she and husband-writing partner Steven Barnes are working with producers to adapt two of her works for TV. The author, screenwriter and professor who has been called the “doyenne of Black horror” is teaching “The Sunken Place” at UCLA - its title taken from a scene in Jordan Peele’s breakout film “ Get Out.” Created in 2017, the wildly popular course explores racism and survival through the lens of Black horror film and fiction, drawing on her experience as the author of more than a dozen horror novels and executive producer of “ Horror Noire,” a groundbreaking documentary on the subject.Īnd there is her writing. October is Black Speculative Fiction Month, but that doesn’t begin to explain why Tananarive Due is so busy. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores. ![]()
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