The Writer

Monica A. Coleman

I have always been a writer. If you go to my mother’s house, she can show you short stories I wrote in elementary school and poems I wrote in high school. By the time I got to college, I found my niche in the genre of creative nonfiction/ literary journalism. In high school, my claim to fame was being a finalist for essay writing in theĀ NAACP Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics (ACT-SO) with the Ypsilanti-Willow Run, MI branch.

In college, I wrote for a couple campus publications. Always looking for a place to publish my work, I also co-founded and co-edited a journal of expository thought and discourse on specified topics relating to the African Diaspora. You know I had an essay in each edition. My first paid publication was an interview published in the newsletter of theĀ Vanderbilt University Women’s Center . It was an interview with the University Chaplain. I photocopied and taped that check to the wall.