Tananarive Due

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Tananarive Due
Due at the 2023 National Book Festival
Due at the 2023 National Book Festival
Born (1966-01-05) January 5, 1966 (age 58)
Tallahassee, Florida, U.S.
OccupationWriter, educator
NationalityAmerican
EducationMedill School of Journalism (BS, MA)
GenreScience fiction, mystery, horror
SpouseSteven Barnes (husband)
RelativesJason (son)
Nicki (stepdaughter)
Website
www.tananarivedue.com

Tananarive Priscilla Due (/təˈnænərv ˈdj/ tə-NAN-ə-reev DEW) (born January 5, 1966) is an American author and educator. Due won the American Book Award for her novel The Living Blood. She is also known as a film historian with expertise in Black horror. Due teaches a course at UCLA called "The Sunken Place: Racism, Survival and the Black Horror Aesthetic", which focuses on the Jordan Peele film Get Out.[1]

Early life and education[edit]

Due was born in Tallahassee, Florida, the oldest of three daughters of civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due and civil rights lawyer John D. Due Jr.[2] Her mother named her after the French name for Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar.[3]

Due earned a B.S. in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and an M.A. in English literature, with an emphasis on Nigerian literature, from the University of Leeds.[2] At Northwestern, she lived in the Communications Residential College.[4]

Career[edit]

Due was working as a journalist and columnist for the Miami Herald when she wrote her first novel, The Between, in 1995.[4] This, like many of her subsequent books, was part of the supernatural genre.[5] Due also wrote The Black Rose, a historical novel about Madam C. J. Walker (based in part on research conducted by Alex Haley before his death) and Freedom in the Family, a non-fiction work about the civil rights struggle. She contributed to the humor novel Naked Came the Manatee, a mystery/thriller parody to which various Miami-area authors each contributed chapters. Due also authored the African Immortals novel series and the Tennyson Hardwick novels.

Due is a member of the affiliate faculty in the creative writing MFA program at Antioch University Los Angeles[6] and is also an endowed Cosby chair in the humanities at Spelman College in Atlanta.[7]

She developed a course at UCLA called "The Sunken Place: Racism, Survival And The Black Horror Aesthetic," after the release of the 2017 film Get Out. [1] The first course went viral and included a visit from Peele.[1]

Due was featured in the 2019 documentary film Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror, produced by Shudder.[1]

Her novel The Reformatory: A Novel was published by Saga Press in 2023.[8]

Personal life[edit]

Due is married to author Steven Barnes, whom she met in 1997 at a Clark Atlanta University panel on "The African-American Fantastic Imagination: Explorations in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror".[9] The couple lives in the Los Angeles, California area with their son, Jason.[10]

Bibliography[edit]

Novels[edit]

Speculative fiction[edit]

African Immortals series[edit]

Mysteries[edit]

The Tennyson Hardwick novels[edit]
  • Casanegra (2007; with Blair Underwood and Steven Barnes)
  • In the Night of the Heat (2008; with Blair Underwood and Steven Barnes)
  • From Cape Town with Love (2010; with Blair Underwood and Steven Barnes)
  • South by Southeast (2012; with Blair Underwood and Steven Barnes)

Short stories[edit]

Title Year First published Reprinted/collected Notes
Patient Zero 2000 Due, Tananarive (Aug 2000). "Patient Zero". F&SF. 99 (2): 5–21. Due, Tananarive (2001). "Patient Zero". In Dozois, Gardner (ed.). The year's best science fiction : eighteenth annual collection. St. Martin's Griffin.
The Rider 2023 Due, Tananarive (2023). "The Rider". In Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams (ed.). An Anthology of New Black Horror. Penguin Random House.

Other works[edit]

Awards and recognition[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d "What Is Black Horror? 'The Sunken Place' Professor Tananarive Due Explains". shadowandact.com. Retrieved 2020-03-09.
  2. ^ a b Tananarive Due – Author
  3. ^ Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights, by Patricia Stephens Due and Tananarive Due (Ballantine, 2003)
  4. ^ a b Alumni News – Fall 2001
  5. ^ Mary A. Mohanraj,"Tananarive Due" in Richard Bleiler, Ed. Supernatural Fiction Writers: Contemporary Fantasy and Horror. New York: Thomson/Gale, 2003 (pp. 309–314), ISBN 9780684312507.
  6. ^ "Tananarive Due | Antioch University Los Angeles". Retrieved 2013-08-31.
  7. ^ "Past - Present Chairs". Archived from the original on 2013-09-06. Retrieved 2013-08-31.
  8. ^ Hand, Elizabeth (October 30, 2023). "Deaths at a Florida 'reform' school inspire a masterful horror novel". Retrieved 2 November 2023.
  9. ^ a b Introduction by Gardner Dozois to "Patient Zero" by Tananarive Due in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection, p. 491.
  10. ^ "About Tananarive Due". Retrieved 2013-08-31.
  11. ^ Woods, Paula L. (2023-10-26). "Black horror is having a big moment. So is its pioneer, Tananarive Due". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2023-11-19.
  12. ^ Boyagoda, Randy (2023-10-27). "'The Reformatory' Turns the Lingering Impact of Racism Into Literal Ghosts". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-11-19.
  13. ^ "'The Reformatory' tells a story of ghosts, abuse, racism — and sibling love". NPR. November 2, 2023.
  14. ^ "Tananarive Due Knows the Horrors of the Past Are Still Alive Today". Shondaland. 2023-11-02. Retrieved 2023-11-19.
  15. ^ "Review | Deaths at a Florida 'reform' school inspire a masterful horror novel". Washington Post. 2023-11-01. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2023-11-19.
  16. ^ "Los Angeles Review of Books". Los Angeles Review of Books. 2023-10-31. Retrieved 2023-11-19.
  17. ^ Review of "Senora Suerte" by Eugie Foster, July 2006
  18. ^ "Tananarive Due" in Cellarius Stories, Volume 1. Cellarius, Ed., New York: 2018 (pp. 33–75, Kindle edition), ISBN 978-1-949688-02-3.
  19. ^ Words, Tananarive Due in Uncanny Magazine Issue Forty-One | 4102. "The Wishing Pool". Uncanny Magazine. Retrieved 2021-12-20.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  20. ^ "Books in Brief: Fiction; Making It Big in Hair" By Charles Wilson, The New York Times, August 27, 2000.
  21. ^ Due, Tananarive (2023-04-18). The Wishing Pool and Other Stories. Akashic Books. ISBN 978-1-63614-107-7.
  22. ^ 40th NAACP Image Awards Archived 2010-12-15 at the Wayback Machine
  23. ^ Carl Brandon Society Award Winners Retrieved 3-1-2011
  24. ^ "2020 Ignyte Awards Results". FIyahCon2021. Retrieved 2022-06-17.
  25. ^ Asher-Perrin, Emmet (18 September 2022). "Announcing the Winners of the 2022 Ignyte Awards!". Tor.com. Retrieved 13 March 2023.
  26. ^ "2023 World Fantasy Award Winners". Locus Online. Retrieved 20 November 2023.

External links[edit]