Alice Randall

Alice Randall is a New York Times best-selling novelist, award-winning songwriter, educator, food activist, and now memoirist. A graduate of Harvard University, she holds an honorary doctorate from Fisk University, is on the faculty at Vanderbilt University, and credits Detroit’s Ziggy Johnson School of the Theater with being the most influential educational institution in her life. She is widely recognized as being one of the most significant voices in 21st century African-American fiction, the only Black woman in history to write both a number one Country song ("XXX’s and OOO’s") and an ACM video of the year ("Is There Life Out There?" starring Reba McEntire).

Randall has presented across the nation: In auditoriums, libraries, museums, and ballrooms; in fields, in graveyards, and harborside. She once did a talk for a group of students as they marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, In all those spaces she weaves history, literature, practical wisdom, and political passion into powerful exchanges with large and small audiences. She covers expected territory in unexpected ways and makes unexpected territory accessible. "My Black Country," memoir and album, is a summit of storied career. Randall’s work has been or is currently being taught at a wide range of universities, including Fisk, Harvard, Iowa State, Penn State, Philander Smith, Princeton, Tuskegee, The University of Texas Austin, The University of Virginia, and Wesleyan.