A new ecosystem of publishers, bookstores, literary magazines and festivals is promoting African writers and changing the stories told about the region.
As a cookbook author, TV personality and mentor, she sought to burst the chicken-fried stereotype of the South. Sometimes her life was as messy as her kitchen.
In “Farewell to Manzanar,” she wrote about the years she and her family were imprisoned in a camp for Japanese Americans. It became the basis for a TV movie.
By day, he helped run an autism center he opened in a suburb of Paris. In the evening, he delighted audiences as a clown named Buffo. In between, he wrote novels.