Pearl Cleage

Pearl Cleage is currently Distinguished Artist in Residence at Atlanta’s Tony Award winning Alliance Theatre.

She was the founding editor of CATALYST Magazine, an Atlanta-based literary journal, for ten years and served as Artistic Director of Just Us Theater Company for five years.

She currently serves as Atlanta’s first Poet Laureate.

For the National: Blues for an Alabama Sky

Other productions include: Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous at the Alliance and Hartford Stage; Pointing at the Moon, What I Learned in Paris, Blues for an Alabama Sky, Tell Me My Dream and Flyin’ West (the most produced new play in the country in 1994) at the Alliance; The Nacirema Society Requests the Honor of Your Presence at a Celebration of Their First One Hundred Years (co-produced with the Alliance in Montgomery and Atlanta) for the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. Her work in film includes Sit-In. 

Her written works include What Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day (Oprah Book Club pick; spent nine weeks on the New York Times bestseller list), Baby Brother’s Blues (NAACP Image Award for Literature), I Wish I Had A Red Dress, Babylon Sisters, Things I Never Thought I’d Do, We Speak Your Names (co-authored by Zaron W. Burnett, Jr.) and her memoir, Things I Should Have Told My Daughter: Lies, Lessons and Love Affairs.

Awards

Pearl Cleage was awarded the Governor’s Award for the Arts in 2018. She received an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from her alma mater, Spelman College, in 2010 and spent two years as a member of the Spelman faculty.

(Updated September 2022)