Ann Allen Shockley
Ann Allen Shockley is the award-winning author of six books of fiction and non-fiction, including the ground-breaking, now classic novel Loving Her, originally published by Bobbs-Merrill in 1974 and still in print with Northeastern University Press. Loving Her has been acclaimed as the first novel by an African American author to have a Black lesbian protagonist and to deal explicitly with an interracial lesbian relationship.
The author is also the first to write a collection of lesbian short stories by an African American, The Black and White of It. Among other firsts include an anthology of early Black American women writers titled Afro-American Women Writers 1746-19933: An Anthology and Critical Guide; a co-edited reference book on Black librarianship, Handbook of Black Librarianship, and the seminal essay, "The Black Lesbian in American Literature," in Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology.
Her short stories have appeared in Essence, African Americana Review, Negro Digest, Black World, Feminary, Sinister Wisdom, Azalea, New Letters, Freedomways, and others. Ann Allen Stockley lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
Celebrating Hotchclaw (2005)
Hotchclaw is an
HBC-Historically Black College-founded after slavery
to educate Black students. The small, private
debt-ridden Tennessee college is headed by an
imperious president, Andrew Bullock, who is married to
a hard-drinking wife, Cieola. When the college
prepares to celebrate its one-hundred years, a
surprising campus incident sets off a maze of
entanglements.
Involved are Angela LaGrange, a librarian, who is in
love with Michael Stower, popular history professor, who
when his true identity is revealed, leads to a
predominantly white northern university, Penn Murray State.
On the faculty of Penny Murray State are Laramie Cox,
longtime friend of Miachel's and Adofo Ajamyu, a leading
Black scholar invited to speak for the Hotchclaw
celebration.
Also invited to appear are Freewoman Black, an outspoken
Black lesbian poet; Benjamin Hotchclaw, a famous gay white
upstate New York artist; and Adrienne Kennedy, a closeted
New York Black women's magazine publisher.
Student, faculty, and outside lives cross, as discoveries are made, while Hotchclaw confronts internal conflicts, homophobia, and survival. This is a strikingly rare story told with Ann Allen Shockley's dramatic sense and characteristic humor about a world she has created. $17.95.
