The Urbane Urbanite

As a lifestyle and entertainment writer, I interview a lot of people. Almost every story needs quotes. You get quotes by interviewing people. That’s just the way it goes.  I’ve only been writing professionally for three years and in that short time span, I’ve had the opportunity to interview some pretty famous people. I’ve talked men’s style and fashion with John Legend; waxed poetic with Common about performing on stage versus on camera; listened to Ledisi (who is a super-duper sweetheart, by the way) reflect on how friends and family lifted her up during rough times. Two years ago, I sat across from Faith Evans in a hotel room in Boston where she raved about how Aliya S. King’s smokin’ hot debut novel, Platinum , was a spot-on depiction of what it means to be the wife of a hip-hop superstar. And then there was the time Angie Stone threw some very mild shade in the direction of her baby daddy, D’Angelo, during a quick backstage interview I conducted with her a...

"There is something terribly radical about believing that one's own experience and images are important enough to speak about, much less to write about and to perform " -James Baldwin That quote by famed literary icon James Baldwin is a staple on the website for The Fire This Time Festival, and speaks to its mission to provide captivating, conscious portrayals of the black experience and offer a platform for early-career playwrights of African descent to explore new voices, styles and challenging new directions for contemporary theater. The festival, which kicks off its third season on January 16 with a panel discussion on diversity in contemporary theater, includes a four-night limited engagement of seven eclectic ten-minute plays and five staged readings (the panel discussion and readings are free) presented by the Horse Trade Theatre Group. According to Derek McPhatter, a playwright and lead producer of the festiva...

April 15, 2011. That date stares me in the face, mocking me, each and every time I fire up my computer. My homepage is my blog. And April 15 is the last time I updated. Nearly five months ago. Once upon a time, I was a mega-super-blogger. I blogged five days a week, (sometimes seven), and I went in on that blog. I begged writer-friends for exclusive quotes , interviewed my favorite photographers , told my whole life story, chronicled my world as a mother , wife and writer . I shot commercials for new blog posts . (No. Seriously.) I assigned and edited a weekly guest blog spot . I hired an ombudsman . And a graphic designer. And then had the nerve to hire an assistant too. I treated that blog like a full-time job. And then, (surprise, surprise), I burned out. Completely. I’m the energizer bunny when I have a new idea, whether it’s blogging, Tweeting, running or dieting. I don’t do anything halfway. So when I decided to blog, I went all out. And when I found myself with nothing le...

Homer, ancient Greek poet & scholar Scholarly is the last word I would used to describe myself. In fact, the adjective is on my list of words people overuse when describing themselves and others. (Other words include: epic. icon. amazing. etc.) But, today, I am quite proud to announce that I've got a clip in a scholarly journal. Woot! Woot! Wait. Are written pieces in journals even called "clips?" The word "clips" sounds too light and general - not serious enough. I think the proper phrasing is: I've got an article published in a scholarly journal. Ah, yes. That sounds much better. Yes, yours truly has a piece in JENdA: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies. *Takes Bow*  Here's how it all came to be.

I started working on my novel (for real, for real) in January of this year. I sat down and pumped out a couple of decent chapters. And I got some good feedback that propelled me to keep writing. As I started to use the momentum to pump out more work, something stopped me dead in my tracks: Procrastination. I would set aside time to sit down and write or brainstorm or jot down notes and plot ideas, but, instead, end up on Twitter shooting the breeze with hundreds of folks I do not know. I quickly zeroed in on the problem and scaled back on my tweets. In the past two weeks, Foursquare check-ins and blog promotion aside, I've only tweeted 23 times. That equals out to about 1.6 tweets per day. And more than half of those tweets were replies to messages sent directly to me. Just when I thought I had tamed my social media activities and was back on the road to literary success, my clever, crafty ass found o...

The day after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Kathryn Stockett found herself sitting in her downtown New York City apartment, reflective, lonely and terribly homesick. "I was thinking about my family and thinking about this woman named Demetrie," said Stockett. "She was the African-American woman that worked for our family for 32 years and for the first time in my life, I started to ask myself 'what was she thinking all of those years?' I had totally taken it for granted. I was so naive as a child. She knew everything about us and I didn't know anything about her. So I started writing in what to me was her voice." Ten years and over 60 rejection letters later, Demetrie's voice has become the bona fide literary phenomenon that is The Help . Stockett's debut novel about the complex relationship between black maids and their white female employers during the dawn of the civil rights movement in Jackson, Mi...

I attended my very first (and certainly not my last) National Association of Black Journalists Convention & Career Fair in Philadelphia last week. The Philadelphia Convention Center was the nerve center for everything NABJ: Ceremonies, panels, receptions, parties, film screenings, celebrity performances and a huge career fair. Although I was in reporter mode covering the event for VIBE magazine, I still managed to attend several panels, a couple of receptions and one lively film screening.

Long before starting my own blog, I tested the waters by guest blogging on other sites. It was a great way for me to flex my writing muscle in between paid writing gigs without the burden of having to run an actual blog. Clearly, I got bit by the bug and decided to launch my own joint. But now I'm extending the invitation to you.

If you ask Jack, the 5-year-old little boy who narrates Emma Donoghue's audacious 2010 novel, Room , life is grand. He's got the whole world at his fingertips, at least the world he's come to know. Trapped in an 11-by-11-foot room since the day he was born (there's a spot on the rug that "marks" the occasion), he and Ma, his 26-year-old mother, live day in and day out in a soundproofed shed in the backyard of their captor's house. A man Jack and Ma refer to as Old Nick, kidnapped, rapped imprisoned and impregnated Ma seven years earlier. Now, she's left to raise her smart, inquisitive son under the constraints of this hellish lifestyle. Tough stuff. Donoghue's brave decision to give herself such tight quarters to play with is admirable. The entire first half of the book takes place in the room where mundane tasks - bedtime stories, bathtub time, breast-feeding! - are novelized and made to sound interesting. She also pulls off another daring f...

I've known for a while now that my short story "The Ballerina" had been selected as the fourth runner-up (fifth place) in Pen Tales ' inaugural short story contest. But I decided to wait until they made an official announcement before I blasted it all over my blog, mostly because I couldn't believe it. I am a very insecure writer. Very. I write with great confidence but I am terribly insecure about how others will perceive my work. If that makes sense. That being said, I had no intentions of winning anything when I entered the contest. At all. Whatsoever. Seriously, I wrote the story just for the sake of writing. I had reached a serious roadblock with my novel writing , which still exists today (more on that sadness in another post), and welcomed the opportunity to work on something else. Here's how I stumbled upon the contest.

I can't believe it. A year ago today, I sat down to write my very first blog post : a lengthy review of my experience at a private editor's tasting of an upscale tequila. When I created this blog, it was never my intention to post this much. I figured I'd pump out a post once or twice a month when I felt like it and that would be that. And here I am a year and 105 blog posts later. *Pats self on the back*

Pierre M. Coleman is riding high - and with good reason. The 27-year-old writer-director and Howard University graduate will get to see his 20-minute dramatic short film on the big screen in New York City next week. Hello, My Name is Trouble is a potent, urban drama about a teenager who succumbs to the perils of his surroundings and very bad decision making.  Trouble is packed with solid performances, especially from David A. Bynoe who plays the doomed lead character, Jeremiah and Kevin Craig West as the reverend who tries to keep Jeremiah on the right path. I got the chance to sit down for a chat with Coleman, who's been busy working the festival circuit to promote his critically acclaimed film. The Newark, NJ native talks about how his father inspired the script, his future projects - and what he'll do to tame my ego if I'm lucky enough to star in one of his flicks.

I've been working as a freelance writer for two years.  The more I do it, the more I love it.  Not the freelance part, but the writing part. To those outside of the business, freelancing sounds glamorous: working in your pajamas from the comfort of your own home; being your own boss; making your own schedule.  Sure, it's great.  But don't forget to add to that: stalking chasing down folks to pay you your money; not having a steady guaranteed pay check or health insurance; having to constantly hustle, pitch and network to get that next assignment.  It takes a lot of work and everybody ain't cut out for it. I'm fortunate enough to have a steady 9to5, which means that I do the majority of my freelance work on the side.  I'm ready to change that. I'd like to have a steady 9to5 writing job.  It doesn't necessarily have to be with a magazine, but could also be with XYZ organization as long as it's a writing position of some sort...

Okay. I'm just going to jump right in and say it.  Here it goes. *Lip Quiver* I've started writing my novel. *Grabs MacBook and Hides Under Desk*

Last December, when Aliya S. King first told me the topic of a feature she was working on for VIBE magazine, my jaw dropped. Not only did I know then that a story about cross-dressing, gender-bending students who attend the illustrious Morehouse College (On Stands Everywhere Today!) would go viral and send tongues wagging (the president of the college issued a lengthy letter to the Morehouse community, refuting the claims in the story before even reading it. Yesterday VIBE published the story on their website and King was immediately condemned and met with harsh criticism both via Twitter and the VIBE message boards), but I also knew she was about to write the hell out of it, which she did. I wanted in!

It feels like it was just yesterday that I decided to start a blog. I had no idea what I would write about but I did know that no matter what I chose to publish on the internets, I would follow the number one rule of writing: Write What You Know . And if there was something I didn't know, I'd interview the person who did. Over the last few months I've...

Aliya S. King is a mess right now. A few weeks ago, Original Gangster , the memoir King wrote for legendary Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas hit stands and she didn't so much as blink an eye. It's not that she doesn't care. She simply doesn't have the time. "I'm going nuts" says the wife and mother of two who is juggling multiple national magazine projects and book proposals all while promoting her debut novel, Platinum , an up close and personal page-turner that chronicles the lives of four women involved with men in the hip-hop industry. The novel hits stores nationwide on July 6. "I've never been under so much pressure in my life." She's right. I've known King in numerous capacities over the last 15 years: Teacher Friend Confidant Advisor Mentor Boss And I've never seen her this busy or stressed out. She wasn't this stressed out when she was living under her desk at Billboard magazine. She wasn'...

A few weeks ago, the recipients of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for excellence in writing and journalism were announced. I clicked on the link to read one of the acclaimed stories and was blown away by “ Fatal Distraction ” an in-depth, haunting feature about parents who accidentally kill their children by leaving them in the backseat of their cars, causing them to die of hyperthermia. The jaw-dropping piece was published in The Washington Post Magazine on March 8, 2009 and written by Gene Weingarten, already a Pulitzer Prize winner for his story "Pearls Before Breakfast," but most known for his weekly humor column "Below the Beltway." The day after the story ran, Weingarten held an online chat forum to tackle some tough questions from his readers and discuss the inspiration behind the story and how he almost killed his own daughter over 25 years ago. But I had a few more questions the online chat didn’t cover that he was more than willing to answer.