Book Reading - A World of Black Authors

About the Authors 

Victor Luckerson

Victor Luckerson is a journalist and author who works to bring neglected black history to light. His new book on the history of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Built From the Fire, won the MAAH Stone Book Award, the Lillian Smith Book Award and was named one of the 100 Notable Books of the Year by the New York Times. His writing and research have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Wired, and Smithsonian. He was nominated for a National Magazine Award for his reporting in Time on the 1923 Rosewood Massacre. He also manages an email newsletter about underexplored aspects of black history called Run It Back.

Cheryl Head 

Cheryl A. Head is the author of the award-winning Charlie Mack Motown mysteries, and the 2023 novel, Time’s Undoing which is shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Strand Critics Award, and the Hurston Wright Legacy Award. Cheryl’s books are included on the Detroit Public Library’s African American Book List, and the Special Collections of the State of Michigan Library. Cheryl is National Board Chair of Bouchercon (BOW-chur-CON)—the largest mystery fiction convention in the world, and is a former broadcast executive at WETA, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.  She lives in Washington, DC, with her partner and rescue pooch.

Moses Utomi

Moses Ose Utomi is a Nigerian-American fantasy writer and nomad currently based out of San Diego, California. He has an MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College and short fiction publications in Fireside Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, and more. He is the author of the young adult Fantasy novel DAUGHTERS OF ODUMA and the fantasy novellas THE LIES OF THE AJUNGO and THE TRUTH OF THE ALEKE. When he’s not writing, he’s traveling, training martial arts, or doing karaoke—with or without a backing track.

Soraya Palmer 

Soraya Palmer is the author of The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts, which has been named a best or most anticipated novel by Today, Elle, Ms. Magazine, and Goodreads among others. The novel is currently a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for debut fiction. She has been awarded grants, residences, and fellowships for her writing from the Café Royal Cultural Foundation, the New York Foundation of the Arts, Blue Mountain Residency, and the Nawat Fes Residency in Fes, Morocco. She was born and raised in Flatbush and is a licensed clinical social worker who has organized and advocated for criminalized survivors of gender-based violence, tenants facing eviction, and victims of police brutality. She currently teaches Graduate Fiction at CUNY City College and Writing Magical Realism for the Center for Fiction. She lives in Brooklyn with her cat, Nicholas.

Leta McCollough Seletzky

Leta McCollough Seletzky is a National Endowment for the Arts 2022 Creative Writing Fellow whose work has appeared in The Atlantic; The Washington Post; The New York Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; and elsewhere. She is the author of The Kneeling Man: My Father’s Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., a Black Caucus of the American Library Association Honor Book for Nonfiction, as well as a Library Journal Best Book of 2023 and a BookPage Best Nonfiction Book of 2023.  She is the first African American woman to author a book about Dr. King’s assassination, as well as the first African American writer to do so solely. A former litigator, she holds a J.D. from The George Washington University Law School and a B.A. from Northwestern University.