About Pearl
Pearl
Cleage is an Atlanta based writer whose work has won commercial
acceptance and critical praise in several genres. An award winning
playwright whose Flyin' West was the
most produced new play in the country in 1994, Pearl is also a best
selling author whose first novel, What Looks
Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day, was an
Oprah Book Club pick and spent nine weeks on the New York Times
bestseller list. Her subsequent novels have been consistant best
sellers and perennial book club favorites. I Wish I
Had A Red Dress, her second novel, won multiple book club
awards in 2001. Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do, was a
"Good Morning America!" book club pick in 2003, and Babylon
Sisters made the ESSENCE Magazine best seller list
in 2005. Her most recent novel, Baby
Brother's Blues, was the first pick of the new ESSENCE Book
Club and an NAACP Image Award winner for fiction in 2007. In the March
2007 issue of ESSENCE, Pearl had two books on the best seller list, Baby
Brother's Blues and We Speak
Your Names, a poetic celebration commissioned by Oprah
Winfrey and co-authored with her husband, writer Zaron W. Burnett, Jr.
The poem was also an NAACP Image Award nominee in 2007. Pearl was a
popular columnist with The Atlanta Tribune for ten years and has
contributed as a free lance writer to ESSENCE, Ms., Rap Pages, VIBE and
Ebony. Her recent play, A Song for
Coretta, played to sold out audiences during its
Atlanta premiere in February of 2007 and will be produced at Atlanta's
Seven Stages Theatre in February of 2008 in preparation for a national
tour.
Pearl's
work occupies a unique niche in contemporary African American fiction.
Her characters are as complex and multi-faceted as her readers lives
and their balancing of work, love and family (not necessarily in that
order!) ring true to those who eagerly await each novel. She balances
issues as challenging as AIDS, domestic violence and urban blight, but
the distinguishing features of her books are her optimism, her
commitment to positive change and transformation, and her unwavering
faith in the possibility and power of romantic love. The creation of
good, believable, desirable men -- as well as the women who love them!
-- is a hallmark of Pearl's fiction and her readers are quick to
mention their fondness for Eddie Jefferson, the dread locked hero of What Looks
Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day, Nate
Anderson, the weight lifting high school principal in I Wish I
Had a Red Dress, Burghardt Johnson, the globetrotting
journalist in Babylon Sisters, or their
all time favorite, the mysterious Blue Hamilton, a former R&B
singer turned neighborhood godfather,who is at the center of both Baby
Brother's Blues and Some
Things I Never Thought I'd Do, where
his character is first introduced. This character, with his amazing
blue eyes and remembrance of past lives, not only keeps the peace, but
falls deeply in love and isn't afraid to show it. His relationship with
Regina Burns is at the heart of both books and has made him one of
Pearl's most popular characters.
Pearl is
married to Zaron W. Burnett, Jr., with whom she frequently
collaborates. She has one daughter, Deignan, and two grandchildren,
Chloe and Michael.
