The novel tells the story of four months in the life of a young Chicago woman who discovers she is pregnant and wants to abort her unborn child, who also narrates part of the story. In 2008, her second novel Conception was published, again by St. The Upstate audiobook won the Audie Award for Literary Fiction. Upstate was nominated for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award in Debut Fiction. The book became a popular favorite among youth and urban teachers. Author Terry McMillian called the book "honest" and stated that Buckhanon "captured real emotion". The novel was called "wild and beautiful" by novelist Sapphire, "heartbreaking and true" by writer Dorothy Allison, and "intimate, wrenching" by novelist and journalist Achy Obejas. Upstate tells the story of a young New York couple, and won an award from the American Library Association. Upon its publication, Essence magazine named Buckhanon one of its "Three Writers to Watch". The novel was sold in a publishing auction for a mid six-figure sum. Her first novel, Upstate, was published in 2005 by St. She studied as a humanities doctoral student at the University of Chicago, and obtained her Master of Arts in English from the program.īuckhanon's first published short story was "Card Parties" in 2003 in the Michigan Quarterly Review. Buckhanon received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Chicago, and a Masters of Fine Arts (M.F.A) in Creative Writing from New School University. She found author Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye at Kankakee Public Library and became empowered to write from a Black female perspective. She has remarked she grew up in a time when Black American teenagers were besieged with stereotypes as "crack babies", "welfare moms" and "gangbangers", and she saw her life experiences and voice as ways to "correct misconceptions of Black life for generations to come". She was high school Class President and a community activist as a commitment her parents raised her with. Buckhanon began writing as a young woman. She was born when her parents, Kerry and Juwana Buckhanon, were teenagers. Buckhanon comes from a large middle class Christian family.
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