Terry McMillan

Terry McMillan is a highly successful African American author, best known for her bestselling books Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back. Both of these popular novels were adapted into successful motion pictures. Another one of her novels, Disappearing Acts, was made into a film by HBO Pictures.

McMillan was born in Port Huron, Michigan in 1951 to blue-collar worker Edward Lewis McMillan. Her father was an alcoholic who regularly physically abused her mother, leaving a deep impact on the young McMillan. When she was thirteen, her parents divorced and her mother had to work several odd jobs to provide for her children. At the age of sixteen, McMillan started working at the local library to help her mother make ends meet. It was during this time that she developed a love for reading and was exposed to a world of imagination. She particularly enjoyed the works of Thomas Mann, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. However, it was the discovery of black authors such as James Baldwin and Langston Hughes that truly inspired her.

McMillan is known for her strong female protagonists and her work is characterized by an exploration of the experiences of African American men and women in urban settings. She received her BA in journalism in 1986 from the University of California at Berkeley and her MFA from the Film Program at Columbia University. McMillan's first book, Mama, was self-promoted and she gained national attention in 1992 with her third novel, Waiting to Exhale, which spent many months on The New York Times bestseller list. The novel was later turned into a film by Forest Whitaker in 1995. In 1998, another of McMillan's novels, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, was adapted into a movie. Her novel Disappearing Acts was also made into a direct-to-cable feature. McMillan's latest novel, Who Asked You?, offers an intimate look at the burdens and blessings of family and speaks to trusting one's own judgment even when others do not agree.