Sandra Jackson-Opoku is the author of the award-winning novel THE RIVER WHERE BLOOD IS BORN and HOT JOHNNY AND THE WOMEN WHO LOVED HIM, an Essence Magazine Bestseller in Hardcover Fiction. She also coedited the anthology REVISE THE PSALM: Work Celebrating the Writing of Gwendolyn Brooks. Her fiction, nonfiction and dramatic works are widely published and produced in Adi Magazine, Midnight & Indigo, Aunt Chloe, AFRICA RISEN: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, New Daughters of Africa, Obsidian, Another Chicago Magazine, storySouth, Lifeline Theatre, the Chicago Humanities Festival, and others.

Professional recognition includes a Plentitudes Journal Prize, the Hearst Foundation James Baldwin Fellowship at MacDowell Arts, a National Endowment for the Arts Fiction Fellowship, an American Library Association Black Caucus Award, a City of Chicago Esteemed Artist Award, the Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award, a Globe Soup Story Award, the Joan Perry Barnes Fellow in Crime Writing at Storyknife Writers Retreat, and a Pushcart Prize nomination.

Books by Sandra Jackson-Opoku

Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes

by Sandra Jackson-Opoku - Fiction, Mystery

When Savvy Summers first opened Essie's soul food café, she never expected her customer-favorite sweet potato pie to become the center of a murder investigation. But when Grandy Jaspers, the 75-year-old neighborhood womanizer, drops dead at table two, she suddenly has more to worry about than just maintaining Essie's reputation for the finest soul food in the Chicagoland area. Even as the police deem Grandy’s death an accident, Savvy quickly finds herself --- and her beloved café --- in the middle of an entire city’s worth of bad press. Desperate to clear her name and keep her business afloat, Savvy and her snooping assistant manager, Penny Lopés, take it upon themselves to find who really killed Grandy.

The River Where the Blood is Born

by Sandra Jackson-Opoku