BIOGRAPHY FELLOW 2008 – 2009

Thulani Davis

For a biography of Ma Rainey, Ethel Waters, Alberta Hunter and Bessie Smith

Thulani Davis is a journalist, playwright, and author of several books. Her most recent book, My Confederate Kinfolk, explores her black and white ancestors’ lives around the time of the Civil War. Her other works include two novels, 1959 and Maker of Saints, several plays and the scripts for the films Paid in Full and Maker of Saints. She has also written several award-winning PBS documentaries. She is a past recipient of a Lila Acheson Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers Award, a PEW Foundation National Theatre Artist Residency, and a Charles H. Revson Fellowship. She is a Grammy winner and is a 2007 – 2008 NYU Gallatin Newington-Cropsey Foundation Fellow. Davis was educated at Barnard College, Columbia University, and New York University and taught at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Thulani Davis wrote a biography of four blues queens: Ma Rainey, Ethel Waters, Alberta Hunter and Bessie Smith.