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Bernice L. McFadden

Biography

Bernice L. McFadden

Bernice L. McFadden is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Tulane University and the author of several critically acclaimed novels, including SUGAR, THE WARMEST DECEMBER, LOVING DONOVAN, NOWHERE IS A PLACE, GLORIOUS, GATHERING OF WATERS (a New York Times Editors’ Choice and one of the 100 Notable Books of 2012), THE BOOK OF HARLAN (winner of a 2017 American Book Award and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Fiction), and PRAISE SONG FOR THE BUTTERFLIES (long-listed for the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction). She is a four-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist, as well as the recipient of three awards from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

Bernice L. McFadden

Books by Bernice L. McFadden

Firstborn Girls: A Memoir
by Bernice L. McFadden - Memoir, Nonfiction

On her second birthday in 1967, Bernice McFadden died in a car crash near Detroit, only to be resuscitated after her mother pulled her from the flaming wreckage. FIRSTBORN GIRLS traces her remarkable life from that moment up to the publication of her first novel, SUGAR. Growing up in 1980s Brooklyn, Bernice finds solace in books, summer trips to Barbados and boarding school to escape her alcoholic father. Discovering the works of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, she finally sees herself and her loved ones reflected in their stories of “messy, beautiful, joyful Black people.” Interwoven with Bernice's personal journey is her family's history, beginning with her four-times enslaved great-grandmother, Louisa Vicey Wilson. Her descendants survived Reconstruction and Jim Crow, joined the Great Migration, and mourned Dr. King’s assassination during the Civil Rights Movement.

Sugar
by Bernice L. McFadden