Tina McElroy Ansa was born in Macon, Georgia, USA. In 1971 she graduated from Spelman College (Atlanta, GA, USA), the traditionally black women's college which is one of the six schools in the Atlanta University Center. Her first job after college in 1971 was at The Atlanta Constitution where she was the first black woman to work in the morning newspaper. Employed there for eight years, she worked as copy editor, makeup editor, layout editor, entertainment writer, features writer and news reporter. Her first and third novels "Baby of the Family" and "The Hand I Fan With" were named the Georgia Authors Series Award winners, making her the only two-time winner of the award. "Baby of the Family" (1989) was also named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times. (See film Baby of the Family (2002).) Her second novel "Ugly Ways" (1993) was named Best Fiction by the African American Blackboard List in 1994. In addition to fiction, she writes numerous articles and Op-Ed pieces for newspapers and magazines including The Los Angeles Times, Newsday, The Atlanta Constitution, The Florida Times, Ms. Magazine, Atlanta Magazine and Catalyst Literary magazine. Married to American Film Institute graduate Jonee Ansa, she and her husband directed and produced the Georgia Sea Island Festival in 1989. This over 20-year-old festival displays and seeks to preserve the music, food, slave chants, dialects and traditions of African Americans who lived and worked as slaves on the cotton and rice plantations along the Georgia coast. In addition to her writing novels and screenplays, she has served as writing workshop instructor at Brunswick College, Emory University and Spelman College. At her alma mater Spelman, McElroy Ansa was Writer-In-Residence in 1990 where she also taught creative writing. Along with her literary profundity, she is an avid gardener and birder who currently makes her home in culturally rich St. Simon's Island along the coast of Georgia, USA.