Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America Audiobook

About the Authors

Brenda Watson, CNC, is the bestselling author of The Fiber35 Diet: Nature’s Weight Loss Secret and one of the foremost dietary authorities in America today. She has gained national recognition with her televised PBS special Brenda Watson’s H.O.P.E. Formula: The Ultimate Health Secret. She has two grown children and currently lives in Florida with her husband, Stan, and their dogs.

Tracey Baptiste was born in Trinidad, where she grew up on jumbie stories and fairy tales, and decided to be a writer at the wise old age of three. Her debut, a young-adult novel titled Angel’s Grace, was named one of the 100 best books for reading and sharing by New York City librarians. She is a former teacher, textbook editor, ballerina, and amateur librarian who once started up a library in her house. She writes and edits books for kids.

Varian Johnson is the author of several novels for children and young adults, including The Parker Inheritance, for which he won a Coretta Scott King Honor award; The Great Greene Heist, which was an ALA Notable Children’s Book, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2014, and a Texas Library Association Lone Star List selection; and To Catch a Cheat, a Kids’ Indie Next List pick. You can find him online at varianjohnson.com.

Rita Williams-Garcia is the author of the Newbery Honor–winning novel One Crazy Summer, which was also a winner of the Coretta Scott King Award, a National Book Award finalist, and winner of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction. She is also the author of several other novels for young adults, including Jumped, a National Book Award finalist; Every Time a Rainbow Dies, a Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Book; Fast Talk on a Slow Track, an ALA Best Books for Young Adults; and Like Sisters on the Homefront, a Coretta Scott King Honor Book. She is on the faculty at the Vermont College of Fine Arts in the program for writing for children and young adults.

Kekla Magoon is the Margaret A. Edwards Award-winning author of more than a dozen books for young readers. Revolution in Our Time was shortlisted for the National Book Award and The Rock and the River won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Author Award. She is also the coauthor, with Ilyasah Shabazz, of X: A Novel, which was long-listed for the National Book Award and received an NAACP Image Award and a Coretta Scott King Honor. She serves on the faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Lamar Giles is the Edgar Award–nominated author of young-adult fiction, including the Legendary Alston Boys series, the Epic Ellisons series, and several stand-alone novels. He is the cofounder of We Need Diverse Books and the editor of the WNDB anthology, Fresh Ink.

Angie Thomas was born, raised, and still resides in Jackson, Mississippi. She is a former teen rapper whose greatest accomplishment was having an article about her in Right On! magazine. She holds a BFA in creative writing from Belhaven University and was an inaugural winner of the Walter Dean Myers Grant awarded by We Need Diverse Books.

Jason Reynolds is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, a Newbery Award Honoree, a Printz Award Honoree, a two-time National Book Award finalist, a Kirkus Award winner, a Carnegie Medal winner, a two-time Walter Dean Myers Award winner, an NAACP Image Award Winner, and the recipient of multiple Coretta Scott King honors. He is also the 2020–2021 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. His many books include Long Way Down, which received a Newbery Honor, a Printz Honor, and a Coretta Scott King Honor. You can find his ramblings at JasonWritesBooks.com.

Ibi Zoboi is an author whose novel American Street was a National Book Award finalist and a New York Times Notable Book. She is also the author of Pride and My Life As an Ice Cream Sandwich, a New York Times bestseller. She is the editor of the anthology Black Enough. She holds an MFA degree from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Born in Haiti and raised in New York City, she now lives in New Jersey. You can find her online at www.ibizoboi.net.

Brandy Colbert is the critically acclaimed author of the novels Pointe, The Voting Booth, Finding Yvonne, The Revolution of Birdie Randolph, The Only Black Girls in Town, and the Stonewall Award winner Little & Lion. A trained journalist, she also worked with boundary-breaking ballet dancer Misty Copeland to adapt her memoir into the bestselling book Life in Motion: Young Readers Edition. She is on the faculty at Hamline University’s MFA degree program for writing for children and young adults. find her online at www.brandycolbert.com.

Liara Tamani lives in Houston, Texas. She recieved an MFA in writing from Vermont College. Her fiction has appeared in Apalachee Review, Blackbird, Ducts, Fourteen Hills, The Griffin, and Storyscape Journal, among others. In addition to writing, she teaches the healing movement forms of Nia and yoga.

Justina Ireland is the author of Dread Nation, Deathless Divide, Vengeance Bound, Promise of Shadows, and the Star Wars novel Lando’s Luck. You can visit her online at www.justinaireland.com.

Nic Stone is an Atlanta native and a Spelman College graduate. After working extensively in teen mentoring and living in Israel for several years, she returned to the United States to write full-time. Her debut novel for young adults, Dear Martin, was a New York Times bestseller and a William C. Morris Award finalist. Odd One Out was an NPR Best Book of the Year and a Rainbow Book List Top Ten selection.

Renée Watson is the author of This Side of Home, which was nominated for the Best Fiction for Young Adults by the American Library Association. Her picture book Harlem’s Little Blackbird: The Story of Florence Mills received several honors including an NAACP Image Award nomination in children’s literature. She is also the founder of the I, Too Arts Collective and currently teaches courses on writing for children at University of New Haven and Pine Manor College.

Tochi Onyebuchi is a writer based in Connecticut. He holds a MFA in Screenwriting from Tisch and a JD from Columbia Law School. His writing has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction and Ideomancer, among other places.

Jay Coles is a graduate of Vincennes University and Ball State University. When he’s not writing diverse books, he’s advocating for them, teaching middle school students, and composing for various music publishers.

Coe Booth is the author of Tyrell, Kendra, Bronxwood, and Kinda like Brothers, among other books. She is a graduate of The New School’s Writing for Children MFA program and a winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Fiction.

Jason Reynolds, the author of numerous books for children and young adults, is a Newbery Award Honoree, a Printz Award Honoree, National Book Award Honoree, a Kirkus Award winner, a two-time Walter Dean Myers Award winner, an NAACP Image Award Winner, and the recipient of multiple Coretta Scott King honors. He is the American Booksellers Association’s 2017 and 2018 spokesperson for Indies First.

Xe Sands has more than a decade of experience bringing stories to life through narration, performance, and visual art, including recordings of the Nightwalkers series from Jaquelyn Frank. She has received several honors, including AudioFile Earphones Awards and a coveted Audie Award, and she was named Favorite Debut Romance Narrator of 2011 in the Romance Audiobooks poll.

About the Narrators

Bahni Turpin, winner of numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and several prestigious Audie Awards for her narrations, was named a “Golden Voice” by AudioFile magazine in 2019. Publishers Weekly magazine named her Narrator of the Year for 2016. She is an ensemble member of the Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles. She has guest starred in many television series, including NYPD Blue, Law & Order, Six Feet Under, Cold Case, What about Brian, and The Comeback. Film credits include Brokedown Palace, Crossroads, and Daughters of the Dust. She is also a member of the recording cast of The Help, which won numerous awards.

Ron Butler is a Los Angeles–based actor, Earphones Award–winning audiobook narrator, and voice artist with over a hundred film and television credits. Most kids will recognize him from the three seasons he spent on Nickelodeon’s True Jackson, VP. He works regularly as a commercial and animation voice-over artist and has voiced a wide variety of audiobooks. He is a member of the Atlantic Theater Company and an Independent Filmmaker Project Award winner for his work in the HBO film Everyday People.