Tananarive Due's Blog, page 4

Martin Luther King's telegram to my mother at Leon County Jail

I just returned from a trip to help my mother, Patricia Stephens Due, organize the library-quality papers she has collected since my parents were involved in the 1960s civil rights struggle. (Much of which we used as research while co-authoring Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights.)
This past weekend, Mom reflected on Dr. King's assassination in April of 1968, recalling how her phone started ringing and didn't stop. How she had to swallow her own...

Tananarive Due & Steven Barnes to appear in New York March 28, March 29

I don't get to New York nearly enough, so Steve and I are really looking forward to two appearances coming up on March 28 and March 29, and we hope to see you there!
The first appearance is bittersweet but very timely: A celebration of the life and works of Octavia E. Butler on Saturday, March 28. The next evening, on Sunday, March 29, a program in Harlem will celebrate Tananarive Due. (An incredible honor for me!) Both events are open to the public for $10 ($5 for students and seniors)...

An NAACP Image Award for IN THE NIGHT OF THE HEAT---and a complete list of winners!!!

CAPTION: (left to right) Blair Underwood, Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes on the red carpet at the 40th NAACP Image Awards. Photo credit: WireImage.com.

I'm excited to announce that Steven Barnes, Blair Underwood and I received the 2009 NAACP Image Award for our mystery collaboration In the Night of the Heat , the second novel in our Tennyson Hardwick mystery series! (I was also nominated for Blood Colony , my latest African Immortals novel.)
Wow. [For a complete list of winners announced Feb. ...

Inauguration 2009: The light beyond my parents' tall shadows

"Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at de sun.' We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground."
--Zora Neale Hurston
*******
My journey to Washington, D.C., with my parents—John Due and Dr. Patricia Stephens Due—and my sister Johnita ended, in many ways, as my family's journey began: with an act of defiance.

For weeks before the inauguration, my mother had talked about wanting to gather soil in Washington, D.C. to take home and mingle with the rich...

A simple appeal: Inauguration tickets for my parents

CAPTION: John Due and Dr. Patricia Stephens Due with infant Tananarive


I am looking for Inauguration tickets for my parents, who are longtime civil rights activists in Florida named John Due and Dr. Patricia Stephens Due. Beyond my campaign calls and carefully-budgeted contributions, I am a political outsider…so I am making a simple appeal.

My parent celebrated their 46th wedding anniversary on Jan. 5, and the first lesson they passed to their three daughters was the most profound lesson...