Tina McElroy Ansa

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Tina McElroy Ansa (born 1949) is an African American novelist, filmmaker, teacher, and journalist. Born Tina McElroy to Walter J. and Nellie McElroy in Macon, Georgia, where she grew up in the Pleasant Hill neighborhood. After graduating from Spelman College and working for several years in a variety of positions at the Atlanta Constitution, she has written several novels and has been a frequent contributor to numerous periodicals, including the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She has also been featured on the television segment "Postcards from Georgia" on CBS News Sunday Morning. She instructs writing workshops at Spelman College, Emory University, and Coastal Georgia Community College. She lives with her filmmaker husband Jonée Ansa on St. Simons Island, Georgia where they collaborate on making movies and are active in community events to promote the arts.

Ansa's fiction portrays a variety of Black women in the recent and modern American South, with a blend of the supernatural and traditional superstition. Her first novel, Baby of the Family, was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times. Baby of the Family was also on the African-America Best-seller List for Paperback Fiction. In October 2001, Baby of the Family was chosen by the Georgia Center for the Book as one of the “Top 25 books Every Georgian Should Read.” The book was also awarded The American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults in 1990, and won the 1989 Georgia Authors Series Award.

She and her husband are currently adapting Baby of the Family for the screen in a feature film starring Alfre Woodard, Loretta Devine, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Vanessa Williams, Todd Bridges, Pam Grier, and Tonea Stewart.

[edit] Published Fiction

Baby of the Family (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989. ISBN 0-15-610150-5)
Ugly Ways: a novel (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Co., 1995. ISBN 0-15-600077-6)
The Hand I Fan With: a novel (New York: Doubleday, 1998. ISBN 0-385-47601-9)
You Know Better: a novel (New York: William Morrow, 2002. ISBN 0-06-019779-X)
"Rachel" in Mending the World: Stories of family by contemporary Black writers, Rosemarie Robotham, editor (New York: BasicCivitas Books, 2003. ISBN 0-465-07062-0)