Kalisha Buckhanon is a writer, speaker and commentator creating stories and media about African-Americans, women, love and justice. Kalisha Buckhanon is author of the novels Upstate, Conception, Solemn and Speaking of Summer: a book pick of Essence, O Magazine, TIME, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, Cosmo, Buzzfeed, Lit Hub and more. Her short stories have been printed in Fiction, Fiction International, Oxford American, Black Renaissance Noire, Michigan Quarterly Review, pluck! and more. She is also seen on ID, BET and TV-One true crime shows as an expert. Her next novel, the mystery Running to Fall, will publish in 2022 from the historic African American Literature Book Club (AALBC.com).Kalisha's debut novel Upstate introduced her in such media as People, Elle, Marie Claire, The Guardian/London Observer and Essence, as one of their "Three Writers to Watch." Chadwick Boseman co-narrates the audiobook and it won a Literary Fiction Audie Award. Terry McMillan gave Kalisha the only Young Author Award in her name for the novel. It is published in the UK and France, an American Library Association ALEX Award winner, a Hurston/Wright Foundation Debut Fiction Finalist, a New York Public Library's Best Books for Teens and an inaugural "Literature for Justice" title for National Book Foundation. Kalisha's other honors include a Friends of American Writers Award for Conception, a Pushcart Prize nomination, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship and Phi Beta Kappa induction. She grew up in Kankakee, Illinois, has master's and bachelor's degrees in English from the University of Chicago, has a Creative Writing M.F.A. from The New School in New York City, and has taught preschoolers to seniors in numerous schools and programs across Chicago and New York City.
