All authors have their literary influences that have made a difference to their work and there careers and obviously I'm no different. There has been the books that excited, enlightened and motivated me to do what I'm doing now and in the Litshot section I'll share them with you. But more to the point there has been the writers that produced these works. What has always been a challenge for me was finding black authors who wrote in the genres that I had an interest in. Horror, Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Action Adventure seemed devoid of a black perspective but I knew they were out there and I never gave up the search. So as time passed and my methods of query became more sophisticated I started to dredge up the works and biographies of these pioneers.
It's a pleasure for me to give some props to the important luminaries who directly or indirectly have made my path so much easier. These are people - not all people of colour - who have spearheaded ideas against the grain and against a blinkered establishment. They had the foresight or sheer determination to create, reshape or even deconstruct what we took for granted as the norm. Without their vision I wouldn't be here.
Anton Marks
Nalo Hopkinson
Nalo Hopkinson was born December 20, 1960 in Kingston, Jamaica, and grew up there, as well as in Trinidad and Guyana, through she also spent some time in the US as a child. Her father was noted Guyanese poet Abdur-Rahman Slade Hopkinson. She moved with her family to Toronto, Canada in 1977, where she has lived ever since. She graduated with honors in Russian and French from York University in 1982, and worked as a T-shirt vendor, government bureaucrat, aerobics instructor, library clerk, craftsperson, and art grants officer before switching to full-time writing in 1998.
Robert Beck, better known as Iceberg Slim, sold more than six million books before he died in 1992. At one time he was said to be the best-selling novelist ever. Before he became a writer Beck was a "manager" of prostitutes, or a pimp, for nearly 30 years. When his first book, Pimp: The Story of My Life, came out in 1967, it held nothing back. Beck became an underground cult figure. He would influence numerous writers, rappers, filmmakers, and criminals over the years.
