“My manuscript managed to get to her, and she called me probably a week later. To this day, she has no idea how she found Vivian Stephens, “one of most powerful editors in New York” at the time. “There were maybe four or five African-American romances with Dell.” Success didn't come easy. In the mid-1980s, mass-market fiction was all but closed to African-American writers, Jenkins says. The story was “Night Song,” and it became her first published book in 1994. Then a recently published coworker looked at a story Jenkins had written and insisted she get it to an agent. Jenkins would devour everything from Shakespeare to Superman comics to science fiction.Īs a student at Michigan State University, Jenkins' job dream came true when she landed library work, including full-time employment at the graduate school library.Īs time went by, she married, had two children and was happily working at the reference library at pharmaceutical company Parke-Davis while dabbling in writing. Her mother, an avid reader who taught her seven children about African-American history, instilled in her those same passions. “That’s all I ever wanted to do,” she says. While growing up on Detroit’s east side in the 1950s and '60s, Jenkins says she always dreamed of working in a library.
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