Bernice L. McFadden photo

Bernice L. McFadden

BERNICE L. McFADDEN is the author of ten critically acclaimed novels including Praise Song for the Butterflies (Long listed for the 2019 Women's Prize in Fiction ) The Book of Harlan (winner of a 2017 American Book Award and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Fiction) Sugar, Loving Donovan, Nowhere Is a Place, The Warmest December, Gathering of Waters (a New York Times Editors’ Choice and one of the 100 Notable Books of 2012) and Glorious . She is a four-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist, as well as the recipient of four awards from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA).

McFadden has also penned five novels under the pseudonym: Geneva Holliday

She is a visiting assistant professor of creative writing at Tulane University in New Orleans. She is at work on her sixteenth novel.


“Listen, if you choose to believe nothing else that transpires here, believe this: your body does not have a soul; your soul has a body, and souls never, ever die.”
Bernice L. McFadden
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“In 1922 everything changed again. The Eskimo pie was invented; James Joyce's Ulysses was printed in Paris; snow fell on Mauna Loa, Hawaii; Babe Ruth signed a three-year contract with the New York Yankees; Eugene O'Neill was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; Frederick Douglass's home was dedicated as a national shrine; former heavyweight champion of the world Jack Johnson invented the wrench...”
Bernice L. McFadden
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