Newspaper staff writer and columnist, fiction and nonfiction writer, teacher, librarian, lecturer, consultant, Ann Allen Shockley is a versatile thematic contemporary writer. Like most contemporary fiction authors, she focuses upon current themes--racism, sexism, homophobia--to encourage readers to accept life experiences as they really are, without condemnation based on moral codes that have emanated from the minds of people with narrow vision. In nonfiction, her literary efforts are adjunct to her work as a librarian.

Ann Allen Shockley was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on 21 June 1927. Her parents, Henry and Bessie Lucas Allen, were both social workers. They surrounded their daughter with books of all types and encouraged her to read them as well as those in the library. Thus, her escape into the book world became a source of pleasure and influence approved by the adults she admired. When she was in the eighth grade, her English teacher, Harriet...