Pearl Cleage is a nationally renowned, award-winning and critically acclaimed novelist, playwright, journalist and teacher based in Atlanta. Her first novel What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day was an Oprah Book Club selection and a New York Times best seller. Her other novels include I Wish I Had a Red Dress, Some Things I Thought I'd Never Do, Babylon Sisters, Baby Brother's Blues and Seen It All Done the Rest. Her newest book, Till You Hear from Me (Ballantine/One Word), was published this spring. She is also the author of "We Speak Your Names," a praise poem commissioned by Oprah Winfrey for her 2005 celebration of legendary African American women, written in collaboration with her husband Zaron W. Burnett, Jr. As a playwright, Pearl Cleage's best known works are Bourbon at the Border, Blues for an Alabama Sky and Flyin' West. These plays originated at the Tony Award-winning Alliance Theatre and have gone on to have productions at theatres across the country. She is also the author of A Song for Coretta, written in 2007 during Cleage's time as Cosby Professor in Women's Studies at Spelman College.
Suzi Bass Awards History
2011 Gene-Gabriel Moore Playwriting Award Nominee, The Nacerima Society Requests the Honor of Your Presence at a Celebration of Their First One-Hundred Years
2008 Gene-Gabriel Moore Playwriting Award Winner, A Song for Coretta
