Joan Steinau Lester
Dr. Lester is the award-winning author of six critically acclaimed books. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, Ebony, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Black Issues Book Review, Ms., Cosmopolitan, Common Dreams, and Huffington Post, among others.
Her memoir Loving Before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White won the PEN-Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, and was a Finalist for the Northern California Book Award, Story Circle Sarton Award, and the Foreword Indie Award. It won the Montaigne Medal for the Eric Hoffer Awards.
Other recognitions include the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists’ Siegenthaler Award for NPR Commentary, Finalist for the PEN/Bellweather Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction (Mama’s Child), and the Arts & Letters Creative Nonfiction Finalist Award for her Fannie Lou Hamer essay (adapted in her blog).
Her books have been excerpted in Essence, Black Issues in Higher Education, Ebony, Executive Female, and the anthologies When a Woman Tells the Truth, and 20 Over 60 (forthcoming).