FLYIN’ WEST BACKSTAGE GUIDE 5 Pearl Cleage is a fiction writer, playwright, poet, essayist, and journalist. In her writing, Cleage draws on her experiences as an activist for AIDS and women's rights, and she cites the rhythms of black life as her muse. Cleage (pronounced "cleg") was born on December 7, 1948, in Springfield, Massachusetts, the younger daughter of Doris Graham and Albert B. Cleage Jr. She grew up in Detroit, Michigan, where her father was a church pastor and played a prominent role in the Civil Rights Movement. After graduating from the Detroit public schools in 1966, Cleage enrolled at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she majored in playwriting and dramatic literature. In 1969 she moved to Atlanta and enrolled at Spelman College, graduating in 1971 with a bachelor's degree in drama. She later joined the Spelman faculty as a writer and as a creative director. Also in 1969 she married Michael Lomax, an Atlanta politician and educator. They have one daughter, Deignan Njeri. The marriage ended in divorce in 1979. Cleage married Zaron W. Burnett Jr., writer and director for the Just Us Theater Company, in 1994. In her writing Cleage is zealous about those issues of black life she feels need a forum for discussion, and she promotes practical education with regard to these issues whenever possible. In the essay collection Deals with the Devil and Other Reasons to Riot (1993), she discusses sexism and domestic abuse. Of particular interest in this nonfiction volume is a section entitled "Mad at Miles" in which she criticizes jazz musician Miles Davis for brutality to women and draws parallels to abusive male behavior in everyday relationships. Among other topics, she also writes about the controversial hearings for Clarence Thomas's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court as well as the controversies sparked by the film director Spike Lee and his work. Throughout her career Cleage has often been in the public eye. She worked as press secretary and speech writer in the 1970s for Maynard Jackson, the first black mayor of Atlanta. Since then, her contribution to the Atlanta community has been steady and intense, finding expression through her columns in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Atlanta Tribune; in the pages of Catalyst, a literary journal she cofounded and edited; and in her work as a faculty member at Spelman. In 2014 Cleage published Things I Should Have Told My Daughter: Lies, Lessons, and Love, which chronicles her early years as a writer in Atlanta's turbulent political climate of the 1970s and 1980s. Cleage's first novel, What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, was an Oprah Book Club selection in 1998 and appeared on the New York Times best-seller list for nine weeks. Cleage has received numerous awards in recognition of her work, including the Bronze Jubilee Award for Literature in 1983 and the outstanding columnist award from the Atlanta Association of Black Journalists in 1991. Cleage's theatrical works include Flyin' West (1992), which was the most produced new play in the country in 1994. Her other plays include Blues for an Alabama Sky (1995), Bourbon at the Border (1997), A Song for Coretta (2007), What I Learned in Paris (2012), and Tell Me My Dream (2015). Blues for an Alabama Sky was performed in Atlanta as part of the 1996 Cultural Olympiad in conjunction with the 1996 Olympic Games. In 2013 she was named playwright-in -residence of Atlanta's Alliance Theatre. The initial three-year term was renewed for an additional three years in 2016. ABOUT PLAYWRIGHT PEARL CLEAGE (edited from GeorgiaEncyclopedia.org, PearlCleage.net, and Wikipedia.org) Playwright Pearl Cleage