Aberjhani

Valerie Hyerman is a young creative genius who may or may not have died before her time. Her work as an artist and her beliefs as a spiritual seeker lead Valerie to do something that no one fully understands. On the surface, she appears to have taken her own life and in the process encouraged a... very deadly movement. Beneath the surface, her life seems not to have ended at all.
more

Jimmy Redfyre is a reigning ruler of the world of rock and roll’s darker realms.. There’s nothing his millions of fans will not do for him, but the question is why are they so willing to risk literally everything on his behalf. The answer becomes more and more clear as he plans a massive comeback... tour combined with Christmas Eve plans to orchestrate masses of sacrifices committed in his name. As brilliant as his music is, Jimmy Redfyre is much more like a vampire who feeds off the world at will but nothing is ever quite enough for him, so the more he devours the more he desires.
more

If Jimmy Redfyre represents a demonic presence in the novel “Christmas When Music Almost Killed the World”, the singing prophet-healer known as Ruzahn has to be considered Redfyre’s opposite. Ruzahn’s fans do more than relate to him as a superstar musician. He is also the author of a classic... underground book of writings called “The Black Skylark Songbook.” They look to his work to inspire their lives and Ruzahn himself actually lives a kind of existence that backs up these expectations. In one version of “Christmas When Music Almost Killed the World”, Danny Blue first meets Ruzahn after he has engaged in a battle with Redfyre. In the better known version, they meet during a hurricane and he becomes Danny Blue’s on-again off-again guide through the increasing chaos in their world.
more

Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of sometimes controversial novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially those involving the plight of African-Americans during the late 19th to mid-20th centuries. His work helped... redefine discussions of race relations in America in the mid-20th century. Wright lived with his maternal grandmother in Jackson, Mississippi from early 1920 until late 1925. Here he felt stifled by his aunt and grandmother, who tried to force him to pray that he might find God. He later threatened to leave home because Grandmother Wilson refused to permit him to work on Saturdays, the Adventist Sabbath. Early strife with his aunt and grandmother left him with a permanent, uncompromising hostility toward religious solutions to everyday problems. In 1923, Wright excelled in grade school and was made class valedictorian of Smith Robertson junior high school.
more

Toni Morrison is an American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon and Beloved. She also was commissioned to write the libretto for a new... opera, Margaret Garner, first performed in 2005. She won the Nobel Prize in 1993 and in 1987 the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved. In April 2012 it was announced she would be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Toni Morrison was born in Lorain, Ohio to Ramah and George Wofford. She is the second of four children in a working-class family. As a child, Morrison read fervently; among her favorite authors were Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy. Morrison's father told her numerous folktales of the black community . In 1949 Morrison entered Howard University, where she received a B.A. in English in 1953.
more

Existentialism is generally considered to be the philosophical and cultural movement which holds that the starting point of philosophical thinking must be the individual and the experiences of the individual, that moral thinking and scientific thinking together do not suffice to understand human... existence, and, therefore, that a further set of categories, governed by the norm of authenticity, is necessary to understand human existence. Existentialism began in the mid-19th century as a reaction against then-dominant systematic philosophies, with Søren Kierkegaard generally considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. Opposed to Hegelianism and Kantianism, he posited that it is the individual who is solely responsible for giving meaning to life and for living life passionately and sincerely, even in view of its many existential obstacles and distractions.
more

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke. Though it was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, many French-speaking black writers from African... and Caribbean colonies who lived in Paris were also influenced by the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance is unofficially recognized to have spanned from about 1919 until the early or mid 1930s. Many of its ideas lived on much longer. The zenith of this "flowering of Negro literature", as James Weldon Johnson preferred to call the Harlem Renaissance, was placed between 1924 and 1929 . Until the end of the Civil War, the majority of African Americans had been enslaved and lived in the South. After the end of slavery, the emancipated African Americans began to strive for civic participation, political equality and economic and cultural self-determination.
more

Dr. Ja A. Jahannes is a poet, cultural critic, writer of fiction and nonfiction, psychologist, and composer. His work has appeared in numerous... diverse publications and anthologies.
more

Paco Ahlgren is an American novelist. His debut novel, Discipline, was published in July 2007 by Greenleaf Book Group and it went on to receive the... 2008 Eric Hoffer Book Award in commercial fiction. Born Frank Richard Ahlgren, III, his parents soon nicknamed him "Paco" and he would be known by that name from then on. In his late teens, Ahlgren began a career as a professional musician with the band The Bentley Tock. The Bentley Tock began performing around the campus of The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Ahlgren was the lead vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter. In 1992, The Bentley Tock began recording their songs, releasing the CD titled "Able." Ahlgren continued his musical career with his long-time colleague and friend, Joseph Santori. Together, the two went on to form the acoustic duo known as The Ultraviolet Catastrophe—a name taken from Ahlgren's deep interest in subatomic physics. During his time with the Ultraviolet Catastrophe, Ahlgren became an accomplished cellist, and mastered music theory.
more

George Dawes Green is an American novelist and the founder of the storytelling organization The Moth. Green published his first novel, The Caveman's... Valentine, in 1994, and it was adapted into a film starring Samuel L. Jackson. He quickly followed that success with The Juror, also adapted into a film, starring Demi Moore and Alec Baldwin. Green did not publish another novel until 2009, when Ravens was released. Set in Green's native Georgia, Ravens was critically acclaimed and hailed by the LA Times as "a triumphant return." In 1997, Green founded The Moth, a not-for-profit storytelling organization based in New York City. The idea for The Moth came from evenings Green spent staying up late with friends, exchanging stories, while moths flitted around the lights.
more

John David "Jack" Leigh II , a native of Savannah, Georgia and a graduate of The Savannah Country Day School and the University of Georgia, was a... photographer and author, best known for the cover photograph on the novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The photograph itself, largely considered a major factor in the success of the novel, featured the "Bird Girl" statue from the Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah. Already well known locally as a portrait and documentary photographer, Leigh was commissioned by Random House for the photograph. Leigh wrote and published five books on photography. He died May 19, 2004, in Savannah of colon cancer. He is fittingly buried in Bonaventure Cemetery.
more