Eric Jerome Dickey

Eric Jerome Dickey was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and attended the University of Memphis, where he earned a degree in computer system technology. In 1983, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in engineering. After landing a job in the aerospace industry as a software developer, Eric's artistic talents surfaced, inspiring him to become an actor and a stand-up comedian. Yet Eric quickly found out that writing was something he could do and do well. Taking creative writing classes and consuming the works of his favorite authors, Eric began to shape a writing career of his own. Having written several scripts for his personal comedy act, he started writing poetry and short stories. He joined the IBWA (International Black Writers and Artists), participated in their development workshops, and became a recipient of the IBWA SEED Scholarship to attend UCLA's creative writing classes. In 1994, his first published short story, "Thirteen," appeared in the IBWA's River Crossing: Voices of the Diaspora—An Anthology of the International Black Experience. A second short story, "Days Gone By," was published in the magazine A Place to Enter. With those successes behind him, Eric decided to fine-tune some of his earlier work and developed a screenplay called Cappuccino, which made its local debut during the Pan African Film Festival at the Magic Johnson Theater in Los Angeles in February 1998. Eric kept writing and reading and sending out query letters for his novels for almost three years until he finally got an agent. Eric's novels have since placed him on the map as one of the best writers of contemporary urban fiction.