About the Author
Tananarive Due is an award winning author who teaches Black Horror and Afrofuturism courses at UCLA. As a leading voice in Black speculative fiction for over two decades, her accolades include the American Book Award, NAACP Image Award, and British Fantasy Award. Her works have been featured in best-of-the-year anthologies. Notable titles in her repertoire include Mazywood, The Reformatory, My Soul to Keep, and The Good House. In collaboration with her late mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, she co-authored Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights.
Mazywood, Tananarive Due’s latest book, is set primarily in the present day, with haunting flashbacks to Hollywood’s Golden Age. It follows Johnny and three generations of his family as he pieces together the true story of his grandmother. As a young Black actress whose career spanned from the 1920s to the 1940s, Mazelle brushed shoulders with giants like Lena Horne, Clark Gable, and Hattie McDaniel. Beneath her public image, she carried a secret she had kept and nurtured since she was a child, when a dark wish came true and changed the course of her life.
The Reformatory was named a New York Times Notable Book and an ALA Notable Book. It received the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, the LA Times 2023 Book Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction, the 2024 Chautauqua Prize, and the Shirley Jackson Award. The narrative sheds light on the tragedies of the infamous Dozier School for Boys, exposing a chapter of history kept in the shadows.
Tananarive Due is an experienced speaker, having graced platforms such as the Library of Congress’ National Book Festival and Buzzfeed. Her podcast, “Lifewriting: Write for Your Life!”—co-hosted with her husband—offers engaging conversations and provides unique insights into screenwriting and what it takes to break into Hollywood.
As an executive producer, she played a pivotal role in Shudder’s groundbreaking documentary, Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror. Collaborating with her husband, Tananarive Due co-authored the episode “A Small Town” for Season 2 of Jordan Peele’s “The Twilight Zone” on Paramount Plus.
Contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau to book Tananarive Due for speaking events as a keynote speaker. Use the Request a Speaker form or email info@simonspeakers.com to speak to Tananarive Due’s booking agent to request her speaking fee, booking information, and availability.
Raves and Reviews
Praise for Mazywood
Due crafts memorable and deeply human characters, good and bad alike, and provides a searing, incisive take on the politics of Black performance past and present. Add in nail-biting chase scenes and a blistering final twist, and this heart-pounding horror story further cements Due as one of the greats.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
This enthralling hybrid of showbiz history, supernatural mystery, and nail-biting adventure in the wild spins a chilling, enlightening, and ultimately heartrending saga…. Perilously close to a career triumph for its author.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Tananarive Due knows that the most frightening monsters are rarely the only horrors in the room. Mazywood is smart, scary and deeply affecting, another reminder that few writers can make a monster story carry this much history, or this much heart.”
—Seattle Times
Praise for The Reformatory
You’re in for a treat. The Reformatory is one of those books you can’t put down. Tananarive Due hit it out of the park.”
—Stephen King
Moby Dick might have flipped America on its back to show the rotting underbelly, but The Reformatory‘s looking just as closely at our bad history, and somehow finding the heart beating underneath it all. This is the novel I’ve been waiting for. It breaks your heart, but it also holds it together.”
—Stephen Graham Jones, New York Times bestselling author of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, The Only Good Indians, and My Heart is a Chainsaw
One of the best novels published in 2023. A superb mix of literary fiction, horror, and historical fiction.”
—Gabino Iglesias, NPR Books
The Reformatory is a masterpiece — a new American classic of the uncanny. I was gripped from the first lines to the catch-your-breath desperation of the final pages. Even in the tale’s grimmest moments, Tananarive Due insists on the almost supernatural power of simple kindness. You have to read this book.”
—Joe Hill, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman and Heart-Shaped Box
An epic novel of horror and real history. Tananarive Due displays all her powers as a master of the form, there’s frights and chills and also so much love. I tore through this book. This novel is a straight up masterpiece, it should be read and remembered for a long time.”
—Victor LaValle, bestselling author of The Changeling, and Lone Women
Tananarive Due at her best. Hallucinatory, haunting, terrifying and moving, a tour de force of a novel.”
—S. A. Cosby, bestselling author of All the Sinners Bleed, Razorblade Tears, and Blacktop
Praise for My Soul to Take
Pain, joy, love, madness, and ancient secrets rampage through this smart, beautifully-paced book. Tananarive Due is one of the great heroines of our literature.”
—Peter Straub, New York Times bestselling author of A Dark Matter
Brilliant, moody, dark and delicious,My Soul To Take is Tananarive Due’s best so far, and that is saying a LOT. Absolutely recommended.”
—Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of The King of Plagues and Dust & Decay
My Soul to Take is so enchantingly drawn I could not help but be caught in its spell. From California to Ethiopia to Mexico, Tananarive Due takes you on a nonstop ride that will leave you breathless.”
—Dolen Perkins-Valdez, New York Times bestselling author of Wench
An engrossing—can’t put it down—spooky, sexy, intelligent whirlwind of a ride.”
—Jewell Parker Rhodes
Praise for Joplin’s Ghost
Due shows herself true to her own powerful gift.”
—Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
[M]ore than just a ghost story is Due’s sense of musical and cultural history…Even while she brings to life Scott Joplin the man, Due makes us appreciate Scott Joplin the icon, the symbol. This understanding gives Joplin’s Ghost its haunting power.”
—The Washington Post
In this ambitious and action-packed novel, Tananarive Due blurs genre boundaries as adroitly as her ghost walks through walls. Part love story, part ghost story, part historical fiction, part contemporary adult drama, this book is difficult to categorize—and impossible to put down.”
—Valerie Boyd, author of Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston
In the Media
“Tananarive Due’s ‘The Reformatory’ honors her family’s ghosts”
“Black horror is having a big moment. So is its pioneer, Tananarive Due”
“What if we were already living in Octavia Butler’s ‘Parable of the Sower?’”
“How racism haunts America, and other lessons from Tananarive Due’s ghostly speculative fiction”
