Gwendolyn Osborne (a.k.a "The Word Diva") is a freelance writer based in
Chicago. She is a hopeless romantic and an unabashed book junkie. She
prefers to be called "Gwen," but unapologetically uses the longer version in
her bylines "because it takes up more space in print."
Gwen began her journalism career as a reviewer for The Detroit Free Press.
Her work has also appeared in several national publications including Book
Magazine, Mode Magazine and The Crisis, the organizational publication of
the NAACP. She currently serves as an associate editor for Black Issues Book
Review.
Gwen enjoys well-written novels about women who are smart, feisty and funny,
and men who know how to appreciate such a woman. Beverly Jenkins, Brenda
Jackson, Carla Fredd, Rochelle Alers, Janice Sims, Evelyn Palfrey, Gay G.
Gunn, Lori Foster, Vicki Lewis Thompson and Susan Elizabeth Phillips (the
Chicago Stars series) are among her favorite romance novelists. She enjoys
discovering the new authors she adds to her Emerging Authors List.
When she's not reading romance, Gwen enjoys books on tape and the continuing
characters created in mysteries by a growing number of African-American
writers she calls "Sister Sleuths." These include Valerie Wilson Wesley,
Barbara Neely, Paula Woods, Evelyn Coleman, Karen Grigsby Bates, Ardella
Garland, Pamela Thomas Graham. She is also a fan of Walter Mosley, of Gar
Anthony Haywood's Loudermilk series and of the Detroit-based mysteries by
Gary Hardwick, Lee Meadows and Sterling Anthony. Works by novelists Tina
McElroy Ansa and Pearl Cleage, poet Nikki Giovanni, artist Jonathan Green,
historian Darlene Clark Hine and playwright August Wilson share space on her
keeper shelf with her favorite romances and mysteries.
You can e-mail Gwen by clicking
here.