Reading Series, Fall 2007

SHAY YOUNGBLOOD, fiction writer and playwright

Georgia born writer Shay Youngblood is author of the novels Black Girl in Paris and Soul Kiss, and a collection of short fiction, The Big Mama Stories. Her plays Amazing Grace, Shakin' the Mess Outta Misery and Talking Bones, have been widely produced. Her other plays include Black Power Barbie and Communism Killed My Dog. She completed a radio play, Explain Me the Blues for WBGO Public Radio's Jazz Play Series. The recipient of numerous grants and awards including a Pushcart Prize for fiction, a Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, an Edward Albee honoree, several NAACP Theater Awards, an Astraea Writers' Award for fiction and a 2004 New York Foundation for the Arts Sustained Achievement Award.

Shay Youngblood is currently teaching creative writing at several universities, including American University, Brown University, Boston College, Columbia University, Dartmough College and many others. She has also been John & Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence for the University of Mississippi Creative Writing Workshop; a Visiting Professor at New York University's Graduate Program in Creative Writing Fiction Workshop; and a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the New School; Cole Visiting Professor at Wheaton College; and taught playwriting for the Rhode Island Prison Program.