Skip to main content

Nonfiction Author Spotlight

From narrative accounts and memoirs to documentaries and other journalistic endeavors, nonfiction work runs the gamut on teaching, exploring and going more in-depth with real-life current events, historical, scientific and cultural issues...to name just a few. We will shine a light on the upcoming work of critically acclaimed authors working within this genre, while also introducing you to new and noteworthy talent. The goal is to keep you informed on the matters and topics that interest you the most.

Brenda Coffee, author of Maya Blue: A Memoir of Survival

At 21, Brenda Coffee surrendered herself to her marriage and became a woman who would do almost anything her charismatic and powerful older husband, Philip Ray, wanted. Regardless of whether it was dangerous, adventurous, sexual or illegal, she wanted to be the one woman he couldn’t live without.

Read more »

Nefertiti Austin, author of Motherhood So White: A Memoir of Race, Gender, and Parenting in America

When Nefertiti Austin, a single African American woman, decided she wanted to adopt a Black baby boy out of the foster-care system, she was unprepared for the fact that there is no place for Black women in the “mommy wars.” Austin set off on her path without the ability to seek guidance from others who looked like her or shared her experience. She soon realized that she would have to navigate skepticism not only from the adoption community, who deal almost exclusively with white women, but surprisingly, from her own family and friends as well. MOTHERHOOD SO WHITE is the story of Nefertiti’s fight to create the family she always knew she was meant to have and the story of motherhood that all American families need now.

Read more »

John F. Ross, author of Enduring Courage: Ace Pilot Eddie Rickenbacker and the Dawn of the Age of Speed

ENDURING COURAGE is the electrifying story of the beginning of America’s love affair with speed --- and how one man above all the rest showed a nation the way forward. Eddie Rickenbacker was an innovator on the racetrack, a skilled aerial dualist and squadron commander, and founder of Eastern Air Lines. He showed a war-weary nation what it took to survive against nearly insurmountable odds when he and seven others endured a harrowing three-week ordeal adrift without food or water in the Pacific during World War II.

Read more »