Ann Allen Shockley facts for kids

Ann Allen Shockley (born June 21, 1927) is an American journalist, editor and author. She has also encouraged libraries to place special emphasis on Afro-American collections.

Life and career

Shockley was born in 1927 in Louisville, Kentucky. Shockley was encouraged to read and write creatively at a young age and was heavily influenced by Richard Wright's short-story form in Uncle Tom's Children. Her eighth-grade teacher, Harriet La Forest, was said to serve as Shockley's early mentor and had a large influence on Shockley's writing.

She started writing for an audience in high school, where she worked as the editor for her school's newspaper. She continued to work as a journalist and column writer for various newspapers in her undergraduate studies and later graduated with a bachelor's degree from Fisk University in 1948. Shockley went on to receive her master's degree in library science from Case Western Reserve University in 1959.

She married teacher William Shockley in 1948, and had two children named William Leslie Jr. and Tamara Ann. The couple later divorced but Shockley kept her ex-husband's last name.

Shockley worked as a librarian at Delaware State College and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, before working for Special Negro Collection at Fisk University in 1969. She served as a professor of library science, university archivist, as well as an associate librarian for special collections at Fisk and founded the Black Oral History Program until she later retired in 1988. Throughout her career, Shockley published several books on librarianship and special collections, particularly related to African-American collections. She became a writer of more than thirty short stories, novels, and articles that address issues of racism and homophobia. Shockley wrote numerous articles on the literature of the time, especially within Black feminist circles and was a noted literary critic and feminist theorist.

Major works

Newspaper columns

Throughout July 1945 through March 1954, Shockley worked as a freelance newspaper columnist. She has several works in newspaper columns documented in the Louisville Defender, Fisk University Herald, Federalsburg [MD] Times, and Bridgeville [DE] News that centered primarily on issues in the African-American community and LGBT community. Her writings can be found under "Mostly Teen Talk", "Duffy's Corner", and "Ebony's Topics".

Short stories

Shockley has also written many short stories. They include "Holly Craft Isn't Gay" (1980), "The Eternal Triangle" (1948), "The Curse of Kapa" (1951), and "Monday Will Be Better" (1964).

Non-fiction

• A History of Public Library Services to Negroes in the South, 1900–1955 (1960)
• A Handbook for the Administration of Special Black Collections (1970)
• Living Black American Authors: A Biographical Directory (comp. and ed. with Sue P. Chandler) (1973)
• A Handbook of Black Librarianship (comp. and ed., with E. J. Josey) (1977)
• "The Black Lesbian in American Literature: An Overview", Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (ed. Barbara Smith)(1983)
• Afro-American Women Writers, 1746–1933: An Anthology and Critical Guide (1988)

Fiction

• Not to Be Alone (unpublished novel) (1950b)
• A World of Lonely Strangers (unpublished novel) (1950b)
• The Black and White of It (1980)
• Say Jesus and Come to Me (1982)
• Celebrating Hotchclaw (2005)