Why So Few Black Writers In America’s Fiction Ranks?

“The business is full of fiction writers like me. With one difference: I’m black, born and raised in the United States,” Martha Southgate writes. “At the parties and conferences I attend, and in the book reviews I read, I rarely encounter other African-American ‘literary’ writers, particularly in my age bracket. There just don’t seem to be that many of us out there, and that’s something I’ve come to wonder about a great deal.”