Tananarive Due

Due was born in Tallahassee, Florida, the oldest of three daughters of civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due and civil rights lawyer John D. Due Jr.^[5] Her mother named her after the French name for Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar.^[6]

Due earned a B.S. in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and an M.A. in English literature, with a focus on Nigerian literature, from the University of Leeds.^[7] At Northwestern, she lived in the Communications Residential College.^[8]

Due was working as a journalist and columnist for the Miami Herald when she wrote her first novel, The Between, in 1995.^[8] This, like many of her subsequent books, was part of the supernatural genre.^[9]

Due also wrote The Black Rose, a historical novel about Madam C. J. Walker (based in part on research conducted by Alex Haley before his death),^[10] and Freedom in the Family, a nonfiction work co-authored with Patricia Stephens Due about the civil rights movement.^[11] She contributed to the humor novel Naked Came the Manatee, a mystery thriller parody to which various Miami-area authors contributed chapters.^[12] Due also authored the African Immortals novel series^[13] and co-authored the Tennyson Hardwick novels with Blair Underwood and Steven Barnes.^[14]

Due was a member of the affiliate faculty in the creative writing MFA program at Antioch University Los Angeles^[15] and an endowed Cosby chair in the humanities at Spelman College in Atlanta.^[16]

She developed a course at UCLA called "The Sunken Place: Racism, Survival and the Black Horror Aesthetic" after the release of the 2017 film Get Out. The first course went viral and included a visit from Jordan Peele.^[4]

Due was featured in the 2019 documentary film Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror, produced by Shudder.^[4]

Her novel The Reformatory was published by Saga Press in 2023.^[17][18][19]

Due is the daughter of civil rights activists Patricia Stephens Due and civil rights attorney John D. Due Jr. She has two sisters, Johnita and Lydia.^[20]

Due is married to author Steven Barnes,^[21] whom she met in 1997 at a Clark Atlanta University panel on "The African-American Fantastic Imagination".^[22] The couple lives in Los Angeles with their son, Jason.^[23][24]

Novels

• The Between (1995)
• The Black Rose (2000)
• The Good House (2003)
• Joplin's Ghost (2005)
• The Ancestors (with L.A. Banks and Brandon Massey, 2008)
• Devil's Wake (with Steven Barnes, 2012)
• Domino Falls (with Steven Barnes, 2013)
• The Reformatory (2023)

African Immortals series

• My Soul to Keep (1997)
• The Living Blood (2001)
• Blood Colony (2008)
• My Soul to Take (2011)

The Tennyson Hardwick novels

• Casanegra (with Blair Underwood and Steven Barnes, 2007)
• In the Night of the Heat (with Blair Underwood and Steven Barnes, 2008)
• From Cape Town with Love (with Blair Underwood and Steven Barnes, 2010)
• South by Southeast (with Blair Underwood and Steven Barnes, 2012)

Short story collections

• Ghost Summer: Stories (2015)
• The Wishing Pool and Other Stories (2023)

Graphic novels

• The Keeper (with Steven Barnes, illustrated by Marco Finnegan, 2022)

Other books

• Naked Came the Manatee (as contributor, 1996)

• Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights (with Patricia Stephens Due, 2003)
• Black Panther: Sins of the King (with Steven Barnes, Geoffrey Thorne, Mohale Mashigo, and Ira Madison III, 2024)

Short stories

• "Like Daughter", Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (2000)
• "Patient Zero", The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection (2001)
• "Trial Day", Mojo: Conjure Stories (2003)
• "Aftermoon", Dark Matter: Reading the Bones (2004)
• "Senora Suerte", The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (2006)^[25]
• "Enhancement", Whose Future Is It?: Cellarius Stories, Volume I (2018)

• List of horror fiction writers