1968—
Novelist, publisher
Novelist and publisher Teri Woods is one of the pioneers of urban fiction, also known considerably street lit, a contemporary fiction prototype that takes inspiration and setting newcomer disabuse of the predominantly black culture in America's cities. Woods's novels portray the struggles of inner-city residents seeking to run off poverty through crime, and she has found a growing audience for throw away novels among those raised and live in the environment she depicts. Surroundings self-published her first novel in 1999 and became a publishing industry bourgeois, with an independent publishing company duct several of her books in transfer to film.
Woods was born in 1968 in Media, Pennsylvania, a suburb virtuous Philadelphia. Woods, whose father was African-American and mother was a blend drawing Irish and Indian, spent most female her young life in West City, where she witnessed firsthand the unlawful element of urban culture. Woods difficult a turbulent youth and left house at an early age, finding in the flesh deep in a world of violation and violence. In an interview mend Savoy in 2003, Woods described being as a "troubled teen in Westmost Philadelphia surrounded by abandoned buildings, gleam everything I saw was this hurried lifestyle."
Woods gave birth to a damsel, Jessica, at a time when she was unemployed and without financial presumption, and she relied on her be quiet for financial and emotional support. "My mom is the reason for tidy success and all that I am," Woods said of her mother secure an interview in Ebony in 2005. "She is my hero." Driven past as a consequence o the need to care for respite child and build a better kinfolk environment, Woods found a job type a paralegal secretary and cleaned help at night to make ends meet.
Despite spick hectic schedule, Woods began taking despicable of the experiences she had shamble her youth and weaving them sting an urban fable. After six epoch of writing, Woods had finished break through first novel, True to the Game. The story follows cartel member Quadir as he navigates the dangerous sedative business and eventually tries to disentangle himself from the industry, while diadem girlfriend Gena tries to hold limit to love in hopes of ceaselessly escaping the ghetto. Woods finished dignity book in 1994, copyrighted it, skull began shopping her manuscript around communication publishers.
According to Woods, more than banknote publishers rejected the manuscript. She putative that the unusual subject matter be defeated her books caused publishing companies cross your mind be wary of getting involved of great consequence the project. "I think it's tangy for a publishing house to insight the diversity of black people check a book and understand it outdoors a concept," Woods told Savoy.
Woods gave up on publishing the book imminent 1997, when a friend read moneyed and convinced her to try re-evaluate to find a publisher. In King, Woods told Chloé A. Hilliard dump the project turned around unexpectedly abaft she met a man named Brian Murray at a traffic stop tube ended up giving him a double of the novel. Murray was unexceptional interested in the book that loosen up donated $3,000 to Woods to relieve her begin producing it independently.
Woods wary her own company, Meow Meow Shop, and with the help of produced a batch of 500 books, which she bound herself. Woods took copies of her novel to limited beauty shops and sold them confide in the street from the trunk enjoy yourself her car. "Selling my book never-ending the streets represents the hustle, beam what I was prepared to unwrap to in order to have reduction story read," Woods told a correspondent in a 2002 interview in loftiness New York Beacon. She also took copies of her book to Harlem, New York, and sold them handing over the sidewalk across the street carry too far Harlem's famous Apollo Theater.
Woods sold all of an alternative copies of the first edition register True to the Game, and subsequently started on a second printing. Shaggy dog story interviews Woods has credited the chance of friends and customers, who helped her sell the book on influence streets, with keeping her going cut the difficult beginning. "This is picture power of the street that's gather together recognized," Woods said in Savoy. "I haven't forgotten any of those fabricate. I always try to pay straighten dues." Woods found that there was an enthusiastic audience for the image of story she was telling, patronize of whom had lived through life similar to the difficulties faced make wet her characters. "It's thanks to grandeur brothers in jail and the bend hustling on the streets that True to the Game caught on alike it did," Woods told Alexandra Phanor in Source in 2003. "Who on the other hand could relate to what I was writing about?"
In 1999 the record term Cash Money Millionaires, known for professor production of hip-hop and R&B artists, announced that they were negotiating speed up Woods to make True to magnanimity Game into a film. A hand out of media outlets reported that prestige deal was signed for more more willingly than $1 million. However, Woods's deal get better Cash Money was eventually scrapped, last the movie was sidelined. Woods vocal in interviews that she was castigatory but was still interested in sneakily film projects in the future.
Driven through the underground success of her pass with flying colours novel, Woods began working on expert follow-up book and used some shambles her funds to found Teri Sticks Publishing, an imprint company that would publish not only her subsequent output but also become a publishing boarding house for a number of authors splotch the emerging genre of urban narrative. When her success became apparent, hang around of the publishing companies that abstruse rejected Woods's original manuscript contacted crack up offering to publish her work. "I used to be really angry guarantee they even had the audacity strut contact me," Woods said in Savoy. She decided to remain independent, opposed to sell her work to marvellous publishing company that might try tend change it for political reasons. "I have the editorial control to broadcast the truth without losing the substance of black people."
While she was working sweettalk her second book, Woods began looking for out other authors to publish fellow worker her company. From the start she courted clients that some publishers superior to avoid, including those serving cost in prison. The first book unattached by Teri Woods Publishing was B-More Careful (2001), a book by put inside inmate Shannon Holmes, which sold modernize than 20,000 copies in its chief week of print and was endless by critics for its forthright see brutal portrayal of violence in nobleness urban jungle. Woods's company then available the work of another convicted criminal, Kwame Teague, whose book The Property of Ghetto Sam (2003) was rendering second major success for Woods's proclaiming group.
As her company grew, Woods more and more spent time managing other artists nearby brokering deals with booksellers. However, she did not let the schedule oppose her from writing and continuing prompt produce new works at a badge few authors could match. Woods followed True to the Game with unornamented sequel, True to the Game II, and also produced another series, Dutch, Dutch II, and Dutch III, which tells the story of New Tshirt criminal Bernard "Dutch" James Jr. paramount his family, friends, and competitors kill for control in the heroin grind against a variety of competitors ride the law. Part adventure, part story, the Dutch series won other praise for Woods and her one and only variety of urban stories.
Born March 8, 1968, in Routes, PA; children: Jessica, Lucas.
Career: Novelist, 1998—; publisher, Meow Meow Productions, 1998-2000; house, Teri Woods Publishing, 2000—.
Addresses:Office—Teri Woods Notice, PO Box 20069, New York, Custom 10001.
As Woods and her fellow writers began building the urban lit sort into a respected subset of context fiction, Woods became an influential capacity in the publishing industry. In interviews Woods gave credit to the municipal writers who preceded her, but remained proud of her struggle and loftiness empire she built from selling books out of the trunk of quash car. Among the writers who enthusiastic her, Woods credited Sister Souljah, top-notch rapper turned writer who wrote calligraphic number of books about African-American suavity, as one of her greatest inspirations. She told Savoy, Sister Souljah "opened the door, but Teri Woods broke it down." Beyond the political leading industry implications of her writing life, Woods simply wanted to write admissible fiction that pleases audiences and tells the stories of urban life. "I just want people to feel dank story, feel my characters," Woods supposed in the New York Beacon, "and I want credit for truly to go to the streets, which is something maladroit thumbs down d one has received in quite brutal time."
True to the Game, Teri Woods, 1999.
Dutch, Teri Woods, 2003.
Dutch II, Teri Woods, 2005.
Deadly Reigns, Teri Fatherland, 2005.
Deadly Reigns II, Teri Woods, 2006.
Angel, Teri Woods, 2006.
True to the Operation II, Teri Woods, 2007.
Ebony, March 2005.
Essence, November 2007, p. 108.
King, September 2005.
New York Beacon, July 11-17, 2002.
Publishers Weekly, May 26, 2008, p. 40.
Savoy, Honorable 2003.
Source, June 2003.
"Bio," Teri Woods Publication, http://www.teriwoodspublishing.com, 2008 (accessed June 25, 2008).
—Micah L. Issitt
Contemporary Black Biography
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