[{"id":289,"date":"2025-09-10T17:12:24","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T22:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pvamu.edu\/morrisonwritingprogram\/?page_id=289"},"modified":"2025-09-10T17:12:24","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T22:12:24","slug":"daniel-black-ph-d","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.pvamu.edu\/morrisonwritingprogram\/daniel-black-ph-d\/","title":{"rendered":"Daniel Black, Ph.D."},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Dr<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Daniel Black, Ph.D.<\/strong>Writer-in-Residence<\/h2>\n

Dr. Daniel Black is a 30-year professor of African American Studies at Clark Atlanta University. He is also an award-winning novelist, activist, mentor and public speaker. His published works include They Tell Me of A Home, The Sacred Place, Perfect Peace, Twelve Gates to the City, The Coming, Listen to the Lambs, Don\u2019t Cry for Me, Black on Black, <\/em>and Isaac\u2019s Song.<\/em> In 2014, he won the Distinguished Writer\u2019s Award from the Mid-Atlantic Writer\u2019s Association. The Go On Girl! National Book Club named him \u201cAuthor of the Year\u201d in 2011 for his best-selling novel Perfect Peace<\/em>. Perfect Peace<\/em> was also chosen as the 2014 selection for \u201cIf All Arkansas Read the Same Book\u201d by the Arkansas Center for the Book at the Arkansas State Library. The novel has been reprinted more than ten times and is being heralded as an American literary classic. Dr. Black has been nominated (three times) for the Townsend Literary Prize, the Ernest J. Gaines Award, the Ferro-Grumbley Literary Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, he Georgia Author of the Year Prize, and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.<\/p>\n

In 2015, Dr. Black\u2019s The Coming<\/em> was published to broad critical acclaim. The novel is a first-hand account of the trauma and triumph of Africans aboard a slave ship in the 16th<\/sup> century. Reviewers call this work \u201cbrilliant\u201d, \u201cpoetic\u201d, and \u201ca literary homage to the lives of those Africans tossed into the sea.\u201d National Book Award winner Charles Johnson says, \u201cThe Coming<\/em> is powerful and brilliant.\u201d He goes on to state, \u201cThis is a work to be proud of!\u201d In 2016, Dr. Black\u2019s long-awaited novel Listen to the Lambs <\/em>was released. This novel explores the lives and agency of unhoused people who find each other on the street and create lives of meaning without material substance.<\/p>\n

Dr. Black\u2019s work has been justly celebrated. Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker says this about Perfect Peace<\/em>: \u201cIt is a spellbinding novel that kept me reading late into several nights. A young boy raised as a girl until \u2018she\u2019 was eight years old\u2026. and then? Forced to be a \u2018boy.\u2019 It is a gift to have so much passion, so much love, so much beautiful writing so flawlessly faithful to the language of ancestors who grappled as best they could with more than they could ever understand. This novel will one day be a film of much benefit to us, if done well. The visuals of it will help us see what we are so often blind to: the great fluidity inherent in all things, including \u2018race\u2019 and sexuality. Thank you, Daniel Black.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Black\u2019s newest novel, Don\u2019t Cry For Me<\/em>, was released by HarperCollins on February 1st<\/sup>, 2022. About this novel, National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward says, \u201cDon\u2019t Cry for Me<\/em> is a perfect song: the epistolary dirge of a man singing to his son as he faces death by cancer. At turns intense and funny, tender and brutally honest, Jacob\u2019s letter to his son, Isaac, is revelatory. It\u2019s a beautiful book. Read it.\u201d Black\u2019s newest work is his first essay collection titled BLACK ON BLACK<\/em>, which was released on January 30th<\/sup>, 2023. In response to this work, renowned Baldwin scholar Dr. Eddie Glaude says, \u201cBlack on Black<\/em> is a tour de force. Brilliant. Passionate. Deeply caring. One reads these essays and feels immediately enveloped in Daniel Black\u2019s love\u2014even when he challenges you or when you might disagree. I really needed to read this book in these trying times.\u201d Black also won the 2024 \u201cGeorgia Author of the Year Award\u201d for Black on Black<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Dr. Black also works as a diversity consultant, having spoken at top-tier companies in America such as Google, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, AT&T, and Global Payments. He assists corporations with creating work environments in which all employees, of every level and difference, feel supported and valued.<\/p>\n

A native of Kansas City, Kansas, Black spent his formative years in rural Blackwell, Arkansas. He graduated from Clark College (now Clark Atlanta University) where he earned the prestigious Oxford Modern British Studies fellowship and studied abroad at Oxford University. He was then awarded a full fellowship to Temple University where he studied with Black Arts Movement poet laureate Sonia Sanchez and, in 1992, earned a Ph.D. in African American Studies. Dr. Black has spent the majority of his 30 academic years as a professor of African American Studies at his beloved alma mater, Clark Atlanta University.<\/p>\n

Dr. Black lives in Atlanta and is the founder of the Ndugu-Nzinga Rites of Passage Nation, an initiation society for people of African descent who seek to love themselves and build a world of character for their people.<\/p>\n

In January of 2025, Dr. Black\u2019s 8th<\/sup> novel will drop, a literary sequel to Don\u2019t Cry for Me<\/em>, titled Isaac\u2019s Song<\/em>. His 9th<\/sup>, Simon Says<\/em>, is finished and forthcoming. He is currently at work on part II of The Coming<\/em> titled The Second Coming <\/em>and a black scripture titled The Good Book<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>