$5.00 Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ ERNEST GAINES, San Francisco, Calif., March 13, 1975 Ernest Gaines (b. 1933) was raised in the rich black culture and storytelling tradition of rural Louisiana but was deeply influenced by Russian writers such as Chekhov, Gogol, and Turgenev. The "austere dignity" of his prose has filled six novels, including Catherine Carmier (1964), The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971), and, most recently, A Lesson Before Dying (1993). © Jill Krementz POMEGRANATE
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ ROBERT HAYDEN, Washington, D.C., October 27, 1976 Robert Hayden (1913-1980) was the first African American to be named Consultant in Poetry (now Poet Laureate) at the Library of Congress. His poetic voice, rooted in black experience, had a universal vision that resounded with power in such works as A Ballad of Remembrance (1962) and Words in the Mourning Time (1970). © Jill Krementz POMEGRANATE
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ STANLEY CROUCH, LEON FORREST, ALBERT MURRAY, and JAMES ALAN MCPHERSON, New York, N.Y., May 26, 1994 The influential writers Stanley Crouch (b. 1945), Leon Forrest (b. 1937), Albert Murray (b. 1916), and James Alan McPherson (b. 1943) are pictured here paying homage to a mentor and generous friend, Ralph Ellison, following a memorial service at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. POMEGRANATE
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ RITA DOUE, Charlottesville, Va., March 4, 1995 Rita Dove (b. 1952) has won numerous awards for her verse, including a Pulitzer Prize for Thomas and Beulah (1987), a story-poem about her grandparents. In 1993 she was appointed U.S. Poet Laureate, becoming the youngest poet and the first African American to receive this honor.
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ ISHMAEL REED, Berkeley, Calif., March 22, 1974 Ishmael Reed (b. 1938) has, from his first novel, The Free-Lance Pallbearers (1967), and his first book of poetry, Conjure (1972), been a provocative presence in contemporary writing. His work is filled with tricks of time and typography, voodoo, Egyptian symbolism, satire, and invective. A collection of his best essays, Writin' Is Fightin', was published in 1990. POMEGRANATE
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ DEREK WALCOTT, New York, N.Y., January 18, 1986 Derek Walcott (b. 1930) won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1992, becoming the first native Caribbean to be so honored. "In him," stated the Academy, "West Indian culture has found its great poet." A brilliant scholar and thinker, Walcott has taught at Columbia, Harvard, and Yale Universities and has written numerous volumes of poetry and plays.
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ SONIA SANCHEZ, Philadelphia, Pa., March 14, 1996 Sonia Sanchez (b. 1934) is a poet, playwright, and professor (at Temple University) who has committed herself to political progressivism since the 1960s. She has written and edited numerous volumes, including We a Baddddd People 1970), We Be Word Sorcerers: 25 Stories by Black Americans (1973), and A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women 1974).
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ VERONICA CHAMBERS, New York, N.Y., June 4, 1996 Veronica Chambers (b. 1970) turned her singleminded desire to be a writer into a rite of passage and an act of redemption, capturing both in her spellbinding debut, Mama's Girl 1996). A memoir of her Brooklyn childhood, the book also chronicles her swift rise in the literary world, which includes her former editorial position at the New York Times Magazine. POMEGRANATE
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ GWENDOLYN BROOKS, New York, N.Y., November 13, 1993 Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917) has earned, with her gently insightful poetry, some fifty honorary degrees, a Pulitzer Prize for Annie Allen 1949), the Illinois Laureateship (succeeding Carl Sandburg), and the Consultantship in Poetry at the Library of Congress. She still lives near where she grew up —the South Side of Chicago, the setting for much of her verse.
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ ANNA DEVEARE SMITH, WALTER MOSLEY, and GLORIA NAYLOR, New York, N.Y., July 28, 1994 Playwright and actor Anna Deveare Smith (b. 1950), mystery writer and novelist Walter Mosley (b. 1952), and novelist Gloria Naylor (b. 1950) are pictured here at the 1994 "Spoken Word" series held on Central Park's SummerStage. POMEGRANATE
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ TERRY McMILLAN, New York, N.Y., April 29, 1995 Terry McMillan (b. 1951) is an uninhibited and wildly funny writer whose tales of manners among modern African American women (Disappearing Acts, Waiting to Exhale) have quickly achieved mass success. She is also in demand for her enthralling readings of her work.
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ ALICE WALKER, New York, N.Y., March 11, 1974 Alice Walker (b. 1944), the daughter of a Georgia sharecropper, has become one of America's most prominent literary figures. She is author of eleven books of poetry and prose, including the semiautobiographical The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970) as well as Meridian (1976) and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Color Purple (1982).
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ JAMAICA KINCAID, New York, N.Y., November 27, 1995 Jamaica Kincaid, born Elaine Potter Richardson in St. John's, Antigua, in 1949, has crafted five critically acclaimed books that rediscover and transform her coming of age in the West Indies. Her novels Annie John (1985) and Lucy (1990) gained Kincaid a wide readership, and The Autobiography of My Mother (1996) propelled her to the best-seller list.
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ RALPH ELLISON, New York, N.Y., June 21, 1973 Ralph Ellison (1914-1994) was one of America's most influential postwar writers, author of the novel Invisible Man (1953) and the essay collections Shadow and Act (1964) and Going to the Territory (1987). He saw literature as a "raft of hope" needed to sail through the "snags and whirlpools that mark our nation's vacillating course toward and away from the democratic ideal." POMEGRANATE
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ NIKKI GIOUANHIand JAMES BALDWIN, New York, N.Y., March 17, 1974 Nikki Giovanni (b. 1943) and James Baldwin (1924-1987) were two of the strongest and most provocative literary voices of the 1960s. Baldwin's The Fire Next Time (1963) was a powerful indictment of racial tyranny, while Giovanni's impassioned verse established her as one of America's best-loved poets before she turned thirty. She now teaches at Virginia Tech.
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ WOLE SOYINKA, Stockholm, Sweden, May 1973 Wole Soyinka (b. 1934) was the first African to win the Nobel Prize in literature. A poet, playwright, and novelist, he has unflinchingly chronicled the turmoil of modern postcolonial Nigeria as well as his own traditional Yoruban culture. Following threats on his life by Nigeria's ruling military regime, Soyinka left that country in 1994 and became a spokesman for the return of democracy there.
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ EDWIDGE DANTICAT, Brooklyn, N.Y., July 11, 1995 Edwidge Danticat (b. 1969) began publishing her stories at age four-teen, soon after arriving in the United States from Haiti. Her debut novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), quickly established her presence, and Krik? Krak! (1995) confirmed her promise, earning a nomination for the National Book Award. POMEGRANATE
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ DOROTHY WEST, Oak Bluffs, Martha's Vineyard, Mass., April 28, 1995 Dorothy West (b. 1907) moved from Boston to New York as a young woman and became an integral part of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. She founded two magazines, Challenge and New Challenge, as outlets for African American writers. At age eighty-seven, she published the acclaimed novel The Wedding (1994).
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN, Amherst, Mass., November 5, 1995 John Edgar Wideman (b. 1941) is one of America's most inventive writers, using a complex mix of techniques to create "an elaborate poetic portrait of the lives of ordinary black people." A former basketball star and Rhodes scholar, Wideman won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Sent For You Yesterday 1984). His other works include Reuben (1987), Philadelphia Fire (1990), and All Stories Are True (1992).
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ NTOZAKE SHANGE, New York, N.Y., June 16, 1976 Ntozake Shange, playwright, poet, and novelist, was born Paulette Linda Williams in 1948. She took her African name—meaning "she who walks like a lion" —to help fight "a war of cultural and esthetic aggression." Among her award-winning works are For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide, When the Rainbow Is Enuf (1975), Sassafrass (1976), Nappy Edges (1978), and Liliane 1994).
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ STANLEY CROUCH, LEON FORREST, ALBERT MURRAY, and JAMES ALAN MCPHERSON, New York, N.Y., May 26, 1994 The influential writers Stanley Crouch (b. 1945), Leon Forrest (b. 1937), Albert Murray (b. 1916), and James Alan McPherson (b. 1943) are pictured here paying homage to a mentor and generous friend, Ralph Ellison, following a memorial service at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. POMEGRANATE
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ RITA DOUE, Charlottesville, Va., March 4, 1995 Rita Dove (b. 1952) has won numerous awards for her verse, including a Pulitzer Prize for Thomas and Beulah (1987), a story-poem about her grandparents. In 1993 she was appointed U.S. Poet Laureate, becoming the youngest poet and the first African American to receive this honor.
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ ISHMAEL REED, Berkeley, Calif., March 22, 1974 Ishmael Reed (b. 1938) has, from his first novel, The Free-Lance Pallbearers (1967), and his first book of poetry, Conjure (1972), been a provocative presence in contemporary writing. His work is filled with tricks of time and typography, voodoo, Egyptian symbolism, satire, and invective. A collection of his best essays, Writin' Is Fightin', was published in 1990. POMEGRANATE
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ DEREK WALCOTT, New York, N.Y., January 18, 1986 Derek Walcott (b. 1930) won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1992, becoming the first native Caribbean to be so honored. "In him," stated the Academy, "West Indian culture has found its great poet." A brilliant scholar and thinker, Walcott has taught at Columbia, Harvard, and Yale Universities and has written numerous volumes of poetry and plays.
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ SONIA SANCHEZ, Philadelphia, Pa., March 14, 1996 Sonia Sanchez (b. 1934) is a poet, playwright, and professor (at Temple University) who has committed herself to political progressivism since the 1960s. She has written and edited numerous volumes, including We a Baddddd People 1970), We Be Word Sorcerers: 25 Stories by Black Americans (1973), and A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women 1974).
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ VERONICA CHAMBERS, New York, N.Y., June 4, 1996 Veronica Chambers (b. 1970) turned her singleminded desire to be a writer into a rite of passage and an act of redemption, capturing both in her spellbinding debut, Mama's Girl 1996). A memoir of her Brooklyn childhood, the book also chronicles her swift rise in the literary world, which includes her former editorial position at the New York Times Magazine. POMEGRANATE
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ GWENDOLYN BROOKS, New York, N.Y., November 13, 1993 Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917) has earned, with her gently insightful poetry, some fifty honorary degrees, a Pulitzer Prize for Annie Allen 1949), the Illinois Laureateship (succeeding Carl Sandburg), and the Consultantship in Poetry at the Library of Congress. She still lives near where she grew up —the South Side of Chicago, the setting for much of her verse.
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ ANNA DEVEARE SMITH, WALTER MOSLEY, and GLORIA NAYLOR, New York, N.Y., July 28, 1994 Playwright and actor Anna Deveare Smith (b. 1950), mystery writer and novelist Walter Mosley (b. 1952), and novelist Gloria Naylor (b. 1950) are pictured here at the 1994 "Spoken Word" series held on Central Park's SummerStage. POMEGRANATE
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ TERRY McMILLAN, New York, N.Y., April 29, 1995 Terry McMillan (b. 1951) is an uninhibited and wildly funny writer whose tales of manners among modern African American women (Disappearing Acts, Waiting to Exhale) have quickly achieved mass success. She is also in demand for her enthralling readings of her work.
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ ALICE WALKER, New York, N.Y., March 11, 1974 Alice Walker (b. 1944), the daughter of a Georgia sharecropper, has become one of America's most prominent literary figures. She is author of eleven books of poetry and prose, including the semiautobiographical The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970) as well as Meridian (1976) and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Color Purple (1982).
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ JAMAICA KINCAID, New York, N.Y., November 27, 1995 Jamaica Kincaid, born Elaine Potter Richardson in St. John's, Antigua, in 1949, has crafted five critically acclaimed books that rediscover and transform her coming of age in the West Indies. Her novels Annie John (1985) and Lucy (1990) gained Kincaid a wide readership, and The Autobiography of My Mother (1996) propelled her to the best-seller list.
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ RALPH ELLISON, New York, N.Y., June 21, 1973 Ralph Ellison (1914-1994) was one of America's most influential postwar writers, author of the novel Invisible Man (1953) and the essay collections Shadow and Act (1964) and Going to the Territory (1987). He saw literature as a "raft of hope" needed to sail through the "snags and whirlpools that mark our nation's vacillating course toward and away from the democratic ideal." POMEGRANATE
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ NIKKI GIOUANHIand JAMES BALDWIN, New York, N.Y., March 17, 1974 Nikki Giovanni (b. 1943) and James Baldwin (1924-1987) were two of the strongest and most provocative literary voices of the 1960s. Baldwin's The Fire Next Time (1963) was a powerful indictment of racial tyranny, while Giovanni's impassioned verse established her as one of America's best-loved poets before she turned thirty. She now teaches at Virginia Tech.
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ WOLE SOYINKA, Stockholm, Sweden, May 1973 Wole Soyinka (b. 1934) was the first African to win the Nobel Prize in literature. A poet, playwright, and novelist, he has unflinchingly chronicled the turmoil of modern postcolonial Nigeria as well as his own traditional Yoruban culture. Following threats on his life by Nigeria's ruling military regime, Soyinka left that country in 1994 and became a spokesman for the return of democracy there.
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ EDWIDGE DANTICAT, Brooklyn, N.Y., July 11, 1995 Edwidge Danticat (b. 1969) began publishing her stories at age four-teen, soon after arriving in the United States from Haiti. Her debut novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), quickly established her presence, and Krik? Krak! (1995) confirmed her promise, earning a nomination for the National Book Award. POMEGRANATE
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ DOROTHY WEST, Oak Bluffs, Martha's Vineyard, Mass., April 28, 1995 Dorothy West (b. 1907) moved from Boston to New York as a young woman and became an integral part of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. She founded two magazines, Challenge and New Challenge, as outlets for African American writers. At age eighty-seven, she published the acclaimed novel The Wedding (1994).
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN, Amherst, Mass., November 5, 1995 John Edgar Wideman (b. 1941) is one of America's most inventive writers, using a complex mix of techniques to create "an elaborate poetic portrait of the lives of ordinary black people." A former basketball star and Rhodes scholar, Wideman won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Sent For You Yesterday 1984). His other works include Reuben (1987), Philadelphia Fire (1990), and All Stories Are True (1992).
$5.00 Vintage Postcard Black Writers PHOTOGRAPHS BY JILL KREMENTZ NTOZAKE SHANGE, New York, N.Y., June 16, 1976 Ntozake Shange, playwright, poet, and novelist, was born Paulette Linda Williams in 1948. She took her African name—meaning "she who walks like a lion" —to help fight "a war of cultural and esthetic aggression." Among her award-winning works are For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide, When the Rainbow Is Enuf (1975), Sassafrass (1976), Nappy Edges (1978), and Liliane 1994).
