"Pursue Your Writing Life Like a Dog Pursues a Bone" with Bernice L. McFadden

Reed, Write, and Create

On episode 31 of the podcast, I have saved the best for last. Our final author interview this season is with the incomparable, American-Book-Award-winning author, Bernice L. McFadden.

Bernice L. McFadden is the author of over a dozen books, including Sugar and Glorious. Her latest novel, Praise Song for the Butterflies, was long listed for the 2019 Women's Prize in Fiction.

McFadden’s novel, The Book of Harlan won the 2017 American Book Award and the 2017 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work. The New York Times selected her novel Gathering of Waters as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2012 and as an Editor's Choice pick. Glorious was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award and featured in O, The Oprah Magazine.

Currently, McFadden is an Assistant Professor of English at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.

During our conversation, Bernice and I discuss:

• The highs and lows of her decades-long literary career.
• How she kept writing when faced with multiple rejections and editors telling her that there was no market for Black authors writing literary fiction.
• Why she decided to start writing “humorous erotica” under the pen name Geneva Holliday.
• How Toni Morrison impacted her early career.
• The roles spirit and synchronicity have played in her writing practice.

If you’re looking for a dynamite episode that will keep you motivated to keep writing, then press play and enjoy!

To learn more about Bernice McFadden, follow her on Facebook and Instagram. Her website is currently under construction, in anticipation of her new memoir, First Born Girls due on shelves in 2025.

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If you are a BIPOC woman writer looking for even more literary inspiration and motivation, not to mention a highly supportive community of BIPOC sister scribes, then you should apply to be a member of the RWC Sanctuary.

The Sanctuary is a private writing community specifically for BIPOC women writers, who take their writing seriously. Novelists, poets, memoirists, short story writers and nonfiction writers, are welcome to apply. Inside the Sanctuary we help our members get paid, get published, and reach all of their writing goals.

For more information, visit The Sanctuary page on the Reed Write and Create website. But don’t delay, because we’ll be closing our doors to new members on June 1 for the summer, and they won’t be opening again until the fall. Prices will increase for membership in the fall.

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