September 4, 2009
The Venus Pen by Tanya Hodges
Late last fall, EbonyJet.com announced the online only re-launch of the popular Gertrude Johnson Williams Short Story Fiction Competition, a project initially started in 1990 by JPC’s founder, John H. Johnson. The competition was named in tribute to Mr. Johnson’s mother, Gertrude Johnson Williams, an avid fan of reading and supporter of the literary arts.
The response was, in a word, overwhelming. Hundreds of entries streamed in within hours of announcing the contest, with the bulk showing up just prior to the final deadline.
In the past, a small group of noted judges made an initial cut from the entries, and the editors of Ebony selected the final winners. This time we decided to reverse the process. Eric Easter and Terry Glover of EbonyJet.com made the preliminary cuts to the semi-finalist round, and a team of star authors including mystery writer Walter Mosley, novelist Trey Ellis, author Sandra Jackson-Opoku and Ebony senior writer Joy Bennett (daughter of Lerone Bennett, Jr.) scored the final selections.
The final competition was tight, with only fractions of a score separating the final winner from the five finalists. But in the end the story with the highest score was The Venus Pen, by Alabama amateur writer and substitute teacher, Tanya Hodges.
The text of the story appears in the July issue of Ebony Magazine.
Ebony Jet
March 22, 2009
Some Like It Hot by Brenda Jackson
Available 04/28/09
In this first ever short story collection, New York Times bestselling author Brenda Jackson takes us on five steamy, sexy adventures. From a freelance writer whose interview with a ruthless, ambitious, and very handsome millionaire turns into something so much more to an attorney’s explosive encounter with a sexy club owner. From an event planner’s very steamy night with an old flame to a businesswoman who wants to get back the man she let slip away while climbing the ladder of success. Experience just how much Brenda Jackson can turn up the heat!
August 3, 2008
Zane’s Sex Chronicles
By Zane
Publication Date: August 5, 2008
New York Times bestselling author Zane presents a tantalizing short story collection, Zane’s Sex Chronicles, which is now the basis of the Cinemax series Zane’s Sex Chronicles — the first urban erotic series on television. The series calls for a sexual revolution and brings forth our favorite characters — Patience James aka Zane, Maricruz, Lyric, Eboni, and Ana Marie — as a force to be reckoned with as they balance common day-to-day issues, a slew of hot sex, and the fine men in the big city. Learn more about their backgrounds in this special tie-in edition.
Like the series, Zane’s Sex Chronicles is about empowerment and liberation — both in and out of the bedroom. Pleasurable from beginning to end, this anthology brings together fifteen hunger-inducing stories from the original bestselling editions of The Sex Chronicles: Shattering the Myth and Gettin’ Buck Wild: Sex Chronicles II.
Zane’s Sex Chronicles weaves together a compilation of bold characters and provocative stories of passion and intoxicating eroticism to seduce both men and women.
June 30, 2008
Say You’re One of Them
by Uwem Akpan
Back Bay Books
Paperback edition available July 15, 2009
Uwem Akpan’s stunning stories humanize the perils of poverty and violence so piercingly that few readers will feel they’ve ever encountered Africa so immediately. The eight-year-old narrator of “An Ex-Mas Feast” needs only enough money to buy books and pay fees in order to attend school. Even when his twelve-year-old sister takes to the streets to raise these meager funds, his dream can’t be granted. Food comes first. His family lives in a street shanty in Nairobi, Kenya, but their way of both loving and taking advantage of each other strikes a universal chord.
In the second of his stories published in a New Yorker special fiction issue, Akpan takes us far beyond what we thought we knew about the tribal conflict in Rwanda. The story is told by a young girl, who, with her little brother, witnesses the worst possible scenario between parents. They are asked to do the previously unimaginable in order to protect their children. This singular collection will also take the reader inside Nigeria, Benin, and Ethiopia, revealing in beautiful prose the harsh consequences for children of life in Africa.
Akpan’s voice is a literary miracle, rendering lives of almost unimaginable deprivation and terror into stories that are nothing short of transcendent.
June 6, 2008
Politics Noir: Dark Tales from the Corridors of Power (Paperback)
edited by Gary Phillips
From authors including National Book Award winner Pete Hautman, Deadly Ink 2007 winner Darrell James, and renowned social commentator turned short-story writer Mike Davis, a chilling and subversive collection of new crime stories with stark themes of greed, corruption and insatiable ambition in the very highest places.
With stories by:
• Ken Bruen
• Mike Davis
• Robert Greer
• Pete Hautman
• Darrell James
• Jake Lamar
• Michele Matinez
• Twist Phelan
• John Shannon
• Ken Wishnia
• and others
June 6, 2008
The Darker Mask
by Gary Phillips, Christopher Chambers (Author)
To be released on August 19, 2008.
Expanding on the concept behind Byron Preiss’s Weird Heroes from the 1970s, George R. R. Martin’s Wild Card series, and Michael Chabon’s McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, The Darker Mask is a collection of original prose stories recalling the derring-do of the beings we call Superheroes and the worlds they fight to save. But unique to The Darker Mask stories is that these plots and characters color a literary universe outside of what has been predominantly white, idiosyncratic, and male in previous homages to pulp. This is the stuff of urban legends, new mythos, and extraordinary folks who might live in a soon-to-be-gentrified ghetto, the dreary rust-belt of the city, or in another dimension. The Darker Mask offers an eclectic mix of popular fiction writers exploring worlds gritty, visceral, and fantastic.
Including stories by: Walter Mosley, L. A. Banks, Naomi Hirahara, Lorenzo Carcaterra, Tananarive Due and Stephen Barnes, Mike Gonzales, Gar Anthony Haywood, Ann Nocenti, Jerry Rodriguez, Reed Farrell Coleman, Doselle Young, Mat Johnson, Peter Spiegelman, Alexandra Sokoloff, Christopher Chambers, Gary Phillips, Victor LaValle, and Wayne Wilson.
May 31, 2008
The Dark Sides of a Woman: A Collection of Short Stories
by Queen Goddess
The Dark Sides Of a Woman is a short story collection that provides a realistic look at the diversity of women in all kinds of relationships — heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual, and interracial — and how they deal with all types of adversity.
As a woman, dealing with relationships can be fraught with difficulties. Author Queen Goddess discusses the anguish that women experience in making tough decisions, not only to please themselves, but also to accommodate the opinions of family and friends.
Passionate and emotional, the moral lessons in The Dark Sides of a Woman thoroughly
examine the strife that women experience in relationships. Whether they deal with deceit, rejection, humiliation, or controversy, Goddess shows how women call on their courage and strength to conquer these challenges.
