Lisa Smith
London born to Jamaican parents, Lisa Smith is a novelist and short-story writer. Lisa worked as a documentary producer/director before turning to writing. Jamaica Road is her debut novel.
If you like author Lisa Smith here is the list of authors you may also like
Buy books on AmazonTotal similar authors (37)
-
Tara Roberts
Tara Roberts breathes passion and vision into her work as a writer and editor and publisher. Her directive and personal mission is to use the power and influence of the media to empower and uplift women and girls, give shape and substance to original ideas, and encourage bold action and achievement.
Buy books on Amazon
Starting her career at Essence magazine as an editorial assistant in the Arts and Entertainment department in 1993, Tara immediately began writing youth-oriented social and cultural commentary on issues relevant to young women. One such article, "Am I the Last Virgin?" was so controversial and drew so many responses from readers across the country that Simon & Schuster contracted Tara to write a book on the topic. The result, Am I the Last Virgin -
Natalie Guerrero
Natalie Guerrero is a writer and producer based in Los Angeles. Her writing has been featured in publications such as Electric Literature, Byline, Goop, and Blavity. My Train Leaves at Three (2025) is her first novel.
Buy books on Amazon -
Antonio Michael Downing
Writer and musician Antonio Michael Downing was raised in Trinidad, Toronto and Kitchener. He is the author of the acclaimed memoir Saga Boy, the novella Molasses, children’s book Stars In My Crown, and the novel Black Cherokee. He graduated from the University of Waterloo with a degree in English Literature and has been a recording artist for two decades including three albums as his alter ego John Orpheus. He is also the host of CBC Radio's book program and podcast The Next Chapter.
Buy books on Amazon -
Celeste Mohammed
Celeste Mohammed is a Trinidadian lawyer-turned-writer whose debut novel-in-stories, Pleasantview (Ig, 2021), won the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, along with multiple other awards. Her second novel-in-stories, Ever Since We Small, inspired by her Indo-Caribbean heritage, was released in the Caribbean in April 2025 by Jacaranda Books UK, with international editions forthcoming in October 2025. Celeste’s nonfiction debut, A Different Energy: Women in Caribbean Oil & Gas (2024), has been well received within the energy industries of Trinidad, Guyana, and Suriname.
Buy books on Amazon
Celeste holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University, and her short fiction has earned prestigious accolades, including the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story -
Isa Arsén
Isa Arsén is a certified bleeding heart based in South Texas, where she lives with her spouse and a comically small dog.
Buy books on Amazon
Her work has been featured in Stone of Madness Press, The McNeese Review, and several independent anthologies and audiovisual projects. Her novels include SHOOT THE MOON (Putnam, 2023), and the forthcoming midcentury drama THE UNBECOMING OF MARGARET WOLF (Putnam, 2025).
When not wrangling prose, Isa is a dialogue engineer & writer for interactive media. -
Rachel Barenbaum
ATOMIC ANNA is Rachel's second novel. The New York Times Book Review said it was “masterfully plotted." And the LA Review of Books called it "propulsive and intimate." Rachel's debut, A BEND IN THE STARS, was named a New York Times Summer Reading Selection and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection.
Buy books on Amazon
Rachel is a prolific writer and reviewer. Her work has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, the LA Review of Books, and more. She is a Scholar in Residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis and her podcast, Check This Out, is sponsored by the Howe Library and A Mighty Blaze. She has degrees from Harvard in Business, and Literature and Philosophy. She is an elected Town Meeting Member in Brookline, MA. -
Jayson Greene
JAYSON GREENE is a contributing writer and former senior editor at Pitchfork. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Vulture, and GQ, among other publications. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.
Buy books on Amazon -
Paula Saunders
Paula Saunders grew up in Rapid City, South Dakota. She danced as an apprentice with the Harkness Ballet in New York City, under David Howard. She is a graduate of Barnard College, as well as the Syracuse creative writing program, and was awarded a post-graduate Albert Schweitzer Fellowship in the Humanities at the State University of New York at Albany under then-Schweitzer Chair, Toni Morrison. She lives in California with her husband. They have two grown daughters.
Buy books on Amazon -
Esther Chehebar
Esther Chehebar is a contributing writer at Tablet magazine, where she covers Sephardic Jewish tradition and community, and a member of Sephardic Bikur Holim, a non-profit supporting the growing Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn. She holds an MFA from the New School and has had her work featured in Glamour and Man Repeller. Chehebar’s first book, I Share My Name, was an illustrated children’s book explaining the Sephardic tradition of naming children for their grandparents. She lives in New York with her husband, their kids, their Ori-Pei named Jude, and a couple of fish. This is her debut novel.
Buy books on Amazon -
Claire Jia
CLAIRE JIA is a writer from the Chicago suburbs. She has written on TV shows such as Zombies: The Reanimated Series, Awkwafina is Nora from Queens, Fresh Off the Boat, and Gangsters of Shanghai. She co-wrote the 2024 Peabody Award-winning video game We Are OFK. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Reductress, The Establishment, The Rumpus, and more. Her parents are from Beijing, and there’s nothing she loves more than haggling for stationary in a chaotic Beijing marketplace. She peaked at age sixteen, when she became the All-State Illinois Shotokan Karate Club Kihon Green Belt Champion. Today she lives in Los Angeles with her friends.
Buy books on Amazon -
Emma Pei Yin
Emma Pei Yin is an Australian-Chinese writer and editor. Her debut novel, When Sleeping Women Wake, has been published globally, translated into multiple languages and was longlisted for the ARA Historical Novel Prize (2025).
Buy books on Amazon
She is also the founder of yinfluence editorial, an agency that works with PoC, queer and neurodivergent writers, connecting them with editors and mentors who understand the stakes of telling stories from the margins.
She has been featured in The Canberra Times, The Australian, Mekong Review, Being Asian Australian, The Hong Kong Review, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar & more.
Emma is working on her second novel with her extremely barky dachshund, lady, by her side. -
Ishi Robinson
Ishi Robinson was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica. A Canadian citizen, she has lived in Bern, Toronto, Rome, London and now lives in Berlin with her Czech husband. Her first published work was a short story in Jamaica’s national newspaper when she was eleven years old. At seventeen, she sent a letter to her father from Switzerland that he thought was so funny he sent it to the other national newspaper, which snagged her a weekly column on teenage life in Kingston. She also previously wrote a weekly column on life as an expat in Rome for a now defunct online magazine. She got back into fiction writing in Berlin, from where she has published short stories in several online publications and one anthology. SWEETNESS IN THE SKIN is her firs
Buy books on Amazon -
Nanda Reddy
Nanda Reddy is a Guyanese-American writer and former fourth-grade teacher. In her teaching days, she co-wrote 180 DAYS TO SUCCESSFUL WRITERS, a day-to-day writing curriculum best suited for elementary classrooms. A GIRL WITHIN A GIRL WITHIN A GIRL is her first novel. An avid reader, she consumes about 100 books a year. The ones rated here are among her favorites!
Buy books on Amazon -
Katie Gee Salisbury
I'm the author of Not Your China Doll, a new biography of Anna May Wong, the first Asian American movie star. The idea for this book has lived in my head for more than a decade, so I'm overjoyed that it's finally completed and forthcoming from Dutton in March 2024!
Buy books on Amazon
My work has appeared in the New York Times, MSNBC, Vanity Fair, The Ringer, the Asian American Writers' Workshop, and elsewhere. I was a finalist for the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in 2021 and I gave the TED Talk “As American as Chop Suey.” I also write the newsletter Half-Caste Woman.
A fifth-generation Chinese American who hails from Southern California, I've now lived in NYC for going on 15 years—though most days I'm still California dreamin'. Not Your China Doll is my -
Xhenet Aliu
Xhenet Aliu's most recent novel, Everybody Says It's Everything (Random House), will be published in March 2025. Her previous novel, Brass (Random House), was awarded the biennial Townsend Prize in 2020, the 2018 Georgia Author of the Year First Novel Prize, was a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection, and was long-listed for the 2018 Center for Fiction First Book Prize. Numerous media outlets, including Entertainment Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle, Real Simple, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, named Brass a 2018 best book of the year. Previously, her debut story collection, Domesticated Wild Things, and Other Stories won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction.
Buy books on Amazon
She teaches Creative Writing at the University of -
Lola Jaye
Lola Jaye is an author, registered psychotherapist and speaker who has penned six novels and a self-help book.
Buy books on Amazon
She was born and raised in London, England and has lived in Nigeria and the United States. She currently works as a psychotherapist. She has written for, CNN, HuffPost, Essence and the BBC and also speaks on issues of mental health and racism. She has also appeared on national television, most recently discussing Covid 19 and mental wellbeing. Lola once gave a presentation on imposter syndrome – a subject close to her heart, because at times she’s unable to believe she’s an actual writer!
The Attic Child (Macmillan) is her first epic historical novel.
Find out more about Lola and what she’s been up to by visiting her website; www.l -
Antonio Michael Downing
Writer and musician Antonio Michael Downing was raised in Trinidad, Toronto and Kitchener. He is the author of the acclaimed memoir Saga Boy, the novella Molasses, children’s book Stars In My Crown, and the novel Black Cherokee. He graduated from the University of Waterloo with a degree in English Literature and has been a recording artist for two decades including three albums as his alter ego John Orpheus. He is also the host of CBC Radio's book program and podcast The Next Chapter.
Buy books on Amazon -
Mia McKenzie
Mia McKenzie is the award-winning author of The Summer We Got Free and the creator of Black Girl Dangerous Media, an independent media and education project that centers queer Black women and girls. She lives with her parenting partner and two children in the Happy Valley of Western Massachusetts.
Buy books on Amazon -
Christina Dotson
Christina Dotson lives in Kentucky and holds an MSW from Western Kentucky University and an MS from Murray State University. She is a member of Crime Writers of Color and was a runner-up for the Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award. When she isn't writing, Christina is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and can be found not exercising and watching a ridiculous amount of reality TV. You can learn more by following @christinadotsonwrites on Instagram.
Buy books on Amazon -
-
Charlotte Runcie
Author of books including the forthcoming debut novel Bring the House Down, out in 2025 with Doubleday Books (USA) and Borough Press (UK).
Buy books on Amazon -
Jemimah Wei
Author of The Original Daughter, forthcoming Spring 2025 from Doubleday Books (US) and Weidenfeld & Nicolson (UK).
Buy books on Amazon
Reader of Literally Everything.
This is the reason I need glasses. -
Angela Flournoy
ANGELA FLOURNOY is the author of The Wilderness. Her debut novel, The Turner House, was a finalist for the National Book Award. The novel won the VCU Cabell First Novel Prize and was also a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and an NAACP Image Award. Her nonfiction has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times and The New Yorker.
Buy books on Amazon
A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Flournoy has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, The New School, Columbia University, Princeton University and the University of California at Los Angeles. She is a faculty member in the low-residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College.
Flournoy has received fellowships from the New York Public Libr -
Morgan Jerkins
Morgan Jerkins is the author of the New York Times bestseller, This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America and the forthcoming Wandering In Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots.
Buy books on Amazon
A graduate of Princeton University and the Bennington Writing Seminars, Jerkins is the current Senior Editor at ZORA of Medium and former Associate Editor at Catapult. She teaches at Columbia University's School of the Arts and most recently was the Picador Professor at Leipzig University in Germany.
She's based in Harlem. -
Jayson Greene
JAYSON GREENE is a contributing writer and former senior editor at Pitchfork. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Vulture, and GQ, among other publications. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.
Buy books on Amazon -
Paula Saunders
Paula Saunders grew up in Rapid City, South Dakota. She danced as an apprentice with the Harkness Ballet in New York City, under David Howard. She is a graduate of Barnard College, as well as the Syracuse creative writing program, and was awarded a post-graduate Albert Schweitzer Fellowship in the Humanities at the State University of New York at Albany under then-Schweitzer Chair, Toni Morrison. She lives in California with her husband. They have two grown daughters.
Buy books on Amazon -
Leila Mottley
Leila Mottley is the author of the novel NIGHTCRAWLING, an Oprah’s Book Club pick and New York Times best seller. NIGHTCRAWLING was longlisted for the Booker Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy award. Mottley was the 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate and published her debut poetry collection WOKE UP NO LIGHT in 2024. Mottley’s writing has also been published in The New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, Marie Claire, and more. Her sophomore novel, THE GIRLS WHO GREW BIG, is forthcoming in June 2025.
Buy books on Amazon -
Christine Pride
Christine Pride is a writer, editor, and longtime publishing veteran. She’s held editorial posts at many different trade imprints, including Doubleday, Broadway, Crown, Hyperion, and Simon & Schuster. As an editor, Christine has published a range of books, with a special emphasis on inspirational stories and memoirs, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. As a freelance editorial consultant, she does select editing and proposal/content development, as well as teaching and coaching, and pens a regular column—“Race Matters”—for Cup of Jo. She lives in New York City.
Buy books on Amazon -
Ella Berman
Ella Berman grew up in both Los Angeles and London, where she studied psychology before working at Sony Music. Her debut novel, The Comeback, was selected as a Read with Jenna book club pick, and her follow-up, Before We Were Innocent, was a Reese’s Book Club pick. Raised by two former hippies on the music and art of the 1960s and 70s, she lives in London with her husband, their senior dog, and their daughter.
Buy books on Amazon -
Natalie Guerrero
Natalie Guerrero is a writer and producer based in Los Angeles. Her writing has been featured in publications such as Electric Literature, Byline, Goop, and Blavity. My Train Leaves at Three (2025) is her first novel.
Buy books on Amazon -
Regina Black
Regina Black is a former civil litigator, current law school administrator, and lifelong romance reader who has always been passionate about the depiction of Black women in popular culture. She currently resides in the southeastern United States with her husband and daughter.
Buy books on Amazon -
Ashley Jordan
Ashley Jordan (she/her) is a millennial from Atlanta by way of Brooklyn. She attended Spelman College, obtaining a degree in Psychology and a lifelong love and appreciation for women’s stories. While she currently works in public health, she has embraced writing as a hobby since penning her first short story in second grade. When Ashley isn't at the day job or writing, she is either at a Beyoncé concert, rewatching Mad Men, or arguing about basketball with anyone who will listen. In 2023, she became a Reese's Book Club LitUp Fellow.
Buy books on Amazon -
Lidija Hilje
Lidija Hilje is a Croatian writer and book coach. After over ten years of trying cases before Croatian courts, she traded in her legal briefcase for a sharpened pencil, and has been writing and working professionally with writers ever since — all in English as her second language. Slanting Towards the Sea is her first novel.
Buy books on Amazon -
Emma Pei Yin
Emma Pei Yin is an Australian-Chinese writer and editor. Her debut novel, When Sleeping Women Wake, has been published globally, translated into multiple languages and was longlisted for the ARA Historical Novel Prize (2025).
Buy books on Amazon
She is also the founder of yinfluence editorial, an agency that works with PoC, queer and neurodivergent writers, connecting them with editors and mentors who understand the stakes of telling stories from the margins.
She has been featured in The Canberra Times, The Australian, Mekong Review, Being Asian Australian, The Hong Kong Review, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar & more.
Emma is working on her second novel with her extremely barky dachshund, lady, by her side. -
Claire Jia
CLAIRE JIA is a writer from the Chicago suburbs. She has written on TV shows such as Zombies: The Reanimated Series, Awkwafina is Nora from Queens, Fresh Off the Boat, and Gangsters of Shanghai. She co-wrote the 2024 Peabody Award-winning video game We Are OFK. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Reductress, The Establishment, The Rumpus, and more. Her parents are from Beijing, and there’s nothing she loves more than haggling for stationary in a chaotic Beijing marketplace. She peaked at age sixteen, when she became the All-State Illinois Shotokan Karate Club Kihon Green Belt Champion. Today she lives in Los Angeles with her friends.
Buy books on Amazon -
Esther Chehebar
Esther Chehebar is a contributing writer at Tablet magazine, where she covers Sephardic Jewish tradition and community, and a member of Sephardic Bikur Holim, a non-profit supporting the growing Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn. She holds an MFA from the New School and has had her work featured in Glamour and Man Repeller. Chehebar’s first book, I Share My Name, was an illustrated children’s book explaining the Sephardic tradition of naming children for their grandparents. She lives in New York with her husband, their kids, their Ori-Pei named Jude, and a couple of fish. This is her debut novel.
Buy books on Amazon -
Erika Rummel
Erika Rummel has taught history at University of Toronto and Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo. She divides her time between Toronto and Los Angeles and has lived in villages in Argentina, Romania, and Bulgaria. The author of more than a dozen books of non-fiction, she has written extensively on social history. She is also the author of two novels, Playing Naomi and Head Games. She was awarded the Random House Creative Writing Award, 2011, for an excerpt of The Effects of Isolation on the Brain.
Buy books on Amazon