Alice Randall

Alice Randall was born in Detroit and graduated from Harvard in 1981. She is the author of the New York Times best-selling The Wind Done Gone which was awarded Best Fiction by The Washington Post (2004), Best Fiction by The Los Angeles Times (2004) and Best of African American Fiction by BORDERS (2004). She has also been awarded the ‘Free Spirit Award’ and the ‘Literature Award of Excellence’ by the Memphis Black Writers Conference, and she was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award in 2002.  In addition to her books, Alice is the only African-American woman ever to write a #1 country song. Over the course of her songwriting career, she has had songs recorded by a widely varied group of artists ranging from Glen Campbell, Steve Earle, and Trisha Yearwood to Adrienne Young, Marie Osmond, and Mark O’Connor. She is also a screenwriter and has worked on adaptations of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Parting the Waters, and Brer Rabbit. She is a frequent contributor to Elle magazine, for whom she profiled Missy Elliot among others. She has also had published articles in The Los Angeles Times and O magazine.