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Thonnia Lee is an award-winning journalist, magazine writer and
editor whose work has appeared in several regional and national magazines.
The former newspaper reporter has written about healthcare, the arts,
education and African American interests and provided clarity and style
to corporate marketing and strategic employee communications. |
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Bio
Thonnia Lee began her journalism career while she was still a student
at Hampton University. She worked nights as an obituary writer for
the Newport News (Va.) Daily Press and attended class during the day.
Clear that journalism was the direction she wanted her career to take,
she convinced editors to allow her to write feature stories, concert
reviews, artist profiles and entertainment advances for the Daily
Press before she graduated from Hampton in 1985.
With clips in hand, she accepted a general assignment reporter position
with the Fort Wayne (Ind.) News Sentinel. There, she covered the environment,
community concerns and was the point person for the first shift for
the afternoon daily. The early-morning deadlines often gave her an
opportunity to shape breaking news into front-page stories with context
and feeling instead of just a police blotter brief.
Ready to develop that experience further, she accepted a position
with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1987. During her six years
there as a general assignment reporter, she wrote about a variety
of things for the metro and features sections. She was awarded the
1992 Media Award for Print, Educational Articles by the Mental Health
Association of Georgia for an article on the affect violence has on
children.
She also taught journalism, general reporting and feature writing
for three semesters (1988 and 1989) as an adjunct professor at Clark
Atlanta University in Atlanta.
In 1993, she decided to expand her magazine freelance work and began
writing full-time from her home. She has written for Essence, Black
Enterprise, Atlanta Magazine, Upscale, HealthQuest and a number of
other newspapers and magazines. She spent four years at Morehouse
College, where she became editor of the college magazine, The Alumnus,
and managed media relations. Hungry to become a better editor, Lee
accepted a position with Delta Air Lines as the editor of its internal
magazine distributed to 50,000 employees.
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The
Youngest Victims
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
(May 1992)
Received award from the Georgia Mental Health Association
Casey Brennan thought it was a joke. Last June, a neighborhood
teen ended an afternoon basketball game when he fired a .22-caliber
pistol between Casey’s sea-blue eyes.
“I was shocked; it looked like a cap gun,” said 14-year-old Casey,
now blind in his right eye. Moments before Casey was shot, the
gunman put the gun to 12-year-old Beau Brennan’s head and fired.
The gun only clicked.
Both boys have had difficulty recovering. Casey withdrew, spending
a lot of time in his room. For a while, Beau had nightmares of
running through his neighborhood screaming for someone to call
911.
The Brennan brothers are among the increasing number of youngsters
who encounter violence and suffer psychologically as a result,
said Carl C. Bell, associate professor of psychiatry at the University
of Illinois School of Medicine.
They live in suburbs and small towns as well as the inner city.
A report from the U.S. Justice Department showed that 22 percent
of the nation’s 12-to 18-year-olds have been victimized at some
point between 1979 and 1986. In another Justice Department study
between 1985 and 1988 (the most recent years for which figures
are available), 30 percent of 12-to19-year-olds experienced some
form of violence.
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The
Girls of Summer: A scarcity of fast-pitch softball in Georgia
fails to keep them from their field of dreams
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
(July 1992)
Under the lights at DeKalb County's Murphy Candler Park recently,
15-year-old Lorene Olney carefully positioned her bat over home
plate. The Sandy Plains Lady Owls, playing in their first fast-pitch
softball tournament, cheered her on.
The first pitch, just outside of home plate, hit the catcher's
glove with a thud. "Ball!"
"Good eyes! Way to watch, Lorene!" yelled the team of faces pressed
against the chain-link fence.
As the next pitch whizzed toward her head, she quickly stepped
back. The team, organized last October, took its cue and beat
a rhythm on the fence. "She don't want it too high, too high!
She don't want it up-in-the-sky!"
The cheer also could describe how out of reach fast-pitch softball
is for girls in Georgia. |
Pearl
Cleage profile
National Black Arts Festival commemorative publication
(Summer 1994)
Pearl Cleage's voice carries you like music. Her sharp,
fast words whip through long sentences that twist with inflection.
Some words, given special attention, are held like notes, longer,
waiting for the rhythm to catch up. Sometimes, waiting for the
sting to hit her intended.
"I finally understand how to write a play, what the structure
is supposed to be, and the content, in a way that is now organic
to what I'm doing, which is exhilaration. But of course, because
I love writing and I want to be able to write everything, now
that I feel comfortable with plays, of course I want to write
a novel because I'm completely terrified by them. It's like,
'OK, you so baaaaad, do that! See can you do that.'"
That voice, soft on the ears, yet confidently piercing, is heard
through her plays, essays and newspaper columns, which examine
black nationalist themes, women's issues, the complexity of
relationships between men and women, violence and community
preservation. Through the written word, her plays or her stage
readings, Cleage's voice often pushes her audiences to nod in
agreement or grit their teeth. But when she's finished, someone
has been introduced to a new way of seeing things. Someone has
been penetrated by Cleage's voice.
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Having
Their Say
Atlanta Magazine
(July 2000)
With a six-figure advance on the line, Atlanta writer Valerie
Boyd is breathing easier now. Back in 1996, Scribner had given
her the biggest payday of her life – and a June 30, 2000, deadline
– for a biography of Harlem Renaissance author and anthropologist
Zora Neale Hurston. A deadline that had once seemed so far away
was upon her, and she sought and received a due date reprieve,
not uncommon in the world of book publishing. What is uncommon
is that Boyd is experiencing the mixture of anxiety and angst
that until recently was almost unknown to black female authors
in Atlanta.
Boyd, 36, is one of a growing number of local African-American
women beginning to strike literary gold. The writers range from
Pearl Cleage, whose first novel, What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary
Day, received Oprah’s Book Club blessing, to Phyllis Alesia Perry,
who introduced Stigmata at Atlanta’s National Black Arts Festival
two years ago, to Nora DeLoach, who added another novel to her
“Mama” mystery series just a few weeks ago. These women are stepping
into the limelight on a national stage, and in the process, validating
and immortalizing the complexity of African-American lives.
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A
Literary Sojourn
Black Enterprise magazine
(February 1994)
Fluttering multicolored flags inscribed with the name “Zora!”
line both sides of East Kennedy Boulevard in Eatonville, Fla.
They are the first welcome signs for those attending the annual
Zora Neale Hurston Festival for the Arts and Humanities. For the
past five years, during the last week in January, this bedroom
community – 10 miles north of downtown Orlando – has been transformed
into a retreat for zealots of the late anthropologist, folklorist
and writer. Participants gather for a mix of folk talk, laughs,
and a chance to take part in workshops and lectures exploring
Hurston’s life and works.
“It’s kind of like being in a Zora Neale Hurston universe,” says
Phyllis Perry, an Atlanta writer and artist who attends annually.
“Most festivals have some kind of itinerary,” adds Perry. “But
I feel perfectly comfortable wandering around looking at the places
where Zora lived or taught, or talking to people that she knew.”
Bold and outspoken, Hurston traveled through the South and the
Caribbean, documenting the lifestyles of African-Americans. She
collected songs, folk tales, fables, religious rituals and stories
during the Harlem Renaissance.
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© Thonnia Lee.com, 2007. All Rights Reserved. |
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