Selected as a "New Jersey Notable Book for 1995-2005" by the New Jersey Center for the Book.

Awarded the "2004 Certificate of Commendation" by the American Association for State and Local History.

"An original and laudatory example of scholarship. . . . A valuable tool . . . for the cultural history of New Jersey and U.S. women's history."-The Year's Work in English Studies (vol. 84, 2005)

African American Women Writers in New Jersey, 1836-2000 is the first and only reference book to identify and document the lives, intellectual contributions, and publications of over one hundred African American women writers in the Garden State from 1836 through 2000. Many, such as Jessie Redmon Fauset, Alice Perry Johnson, Sharon Bell Mathis, Ntozake Shange, Claudia C. Tate, Ruby Ora Williams, and Marion Thompson Wright, were born in the state. Others, like Amina Baraka, E. Alma Flagg, Helen Jackson Lee, Gertrude Williams Pitts, and Dorothy Porter Wesley, although not born there, were residents of New Jersey for more than fifteen years, and made significant contributions during that time.

The volume contains biographical and bibliographical information for each author. There are photographs of the writers as well as citations for their published pamphlets, books, reports, and articles. Sibyl E. Moses has enhanced the text with characteristic excerpts from the poetry and prose of selected writers. The two appendixes highlight the distribution of African American women writers in New Jersey both by city or town, and by genre.

Sibyl E. Moses, Ph.D., is the Reference Specialist in African American History and Culture at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. .