14 Black Bay Area authors to add to your reading list
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Archival materials reflecting the Bay Area's Black history. Photo: Liz Hafalia/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
Black authors around the world are taking literary genres to new heights, and many of them started right here in the Bay.
State of play: Axios asked the team at the San Francisco Public Library's African American Center and Collection Development for recommendations of literary authors who have ties to the Bay Area.
They replied with a long list, one we had to unfortunately condense for this story.
- Here are some of the selections for each genre.
Children's books
Natasha Tripplett: A Jewish Jamaican American adoptee based in the Bay Area, Tripplett has focused her work on bolstering cultural representation in children's literature.
- Notable works include "The Blue Pickup," which tells the story of a young girl's love for fixing automobiles with her grandfather in Jamaica.
Thomishia Booker: A member of the Bay Area's Black Literary Collective, Booker uses her writing to uplift Black children.
- Her series includes the books "Brown Boy Joy" and "My Brown Skin."
Angela Dalton: Based in Oakland, Dalton has a longtime interest in space that inspires her books. She is part of the Bay Area BIPOC Book Creators.
- Notable works include "To Boldly Go," which chronicles "Star Trek" actress Nichelle Nichols' experience as the first Black woman astronaut on TV.
Nonfiction
Akilah Cadet: Co-owner of the Oakland Roots Sports Club, Cadet explores structural oppression from her vantage point as a Black disabled woman in her writings.
- Her book, "White Supremacy is all Around: Notes From a Black Disabled Woman in a White World," includes personal stories from her experience with workplace disability and more.
Rue Mapp: A Bay Area native, Mapp is the founder and CEO of the Oakland-headquartered Outdoor Afro, which advocates for Black connections and leadership in nature.
- Her book, "Nature Swagger: Stories and Visions of Black Joy in the Outdoors," uplifts the history of Black people's relationship to the outdoors, from a journey up Kilimanjaro to a beekeeper couple in Detroit.
Earlonne Woods: This Bay Area resident co-created the podcast "Ear Hustle" with Nigel Poor while incarcerated in the San Quentin State Prison. The podcast was lauded for painting a rare portrait of life behind the bars.
- Woods and Poor's book, "This is Ear Hustle," illuminates their path to the podcast and shares new stories of prison life.
Memoir
Dorothy Lazard: Raised in San Francisco and Oakland, Lazard has made a name for herself as a librarian and public historian.
- Her memoir, "What You Don't Know Will Make a Whole New World," looks back at that journey by tracing her life through historical moments like the murder of Emmett Till, Summer of Love, and the redevelopment of Oakland.
Aisha Harris: Her voice is well-known to listeners of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. Harris, a Bay Area resident, brings that same wit to her book "Wannabe: Reckonings with the Pop Culture that Raised Me."
- "Wannabe" explores the staples of Harris' 90s childhood and analyzes the origins of tropes like the "Black friend."
Melissa Valentine: Valentine completed her debut memoir, "The Names of All the Flowers," after serving as a fellow at the San Francisco Writers' Grotto.
- The memoir examines themes of racial trauma and grief through Valentine's experience seeing her brother fall victim to the criminalization of Black boys and men and later to gun violence in 1990s Oakland.
Contemporary
Kai Harris: A professor at Santa Clara University, Harris traces themes of Black girlhood, the slave narrative and motherhood in her works.
- Her book, "What the Fireflies Knew," a coming-of-age novel told by an 11-year-old girl as she grapples with her new reality after the death of her father and disappearance of her mother.
Romance
Jasmine Guillory: A Bay Area native, Guillory has made a reputation for herself as a rom-com writer. Many of her books are set in the region.
- Her latest book, "Flirting Lessons," is a queer romance that involves a young woman who seeks dating advice from Napa Valley's biggest heartbreaker.
Horror
Tamika Thompson: A former journalist who lives in the Bay, Thompson is among the many Black authors who followed in the footsteps of Octavia Butler to take speculative fiction to new heights.
- Notable works include "Unshod, Cackling, and Naked," a collection of 13 horror short stories that reframe mundane Black experiences and delve into Black women's rage.
Science Fiction/Fantasy
Kemi Ashing-Giwa: A Ph.D. candidate at Stanford's earth and planetary sciences department, Ashing-Giwa weaves messages of anti-colonialism and ecophysiology into her works.
- Notable books include "The Splinter in the Sky," which depicts a tea specialist-turned-spy-turned assassin's mission to rescue her abducted sibling and save her conquered homeland.
Historical fiction
Yaa Gyasi: A Berkeley resident, Gyasi began writing her debut novel as an undergraduate student at Stanford, where she pursued funding to do research in her home country of Ghana.
- Her debut novel "Homegoing" follows two half-sisters as they embark on different paths in 18th century Ghana.