Although born and raised in Southern California, author Angela Flournoy has deep ties to her father’s birthplace of Detroit, which she regularly visited during her childhood.

These visits and the city’s unique cultural footprint had a significant impact on her early life, which would later be a major influence on her work.

As a young adult, she attended the University of Southern California and later attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she focused on her love of fiction, writing, and social awareness.

Best known as the author of the acclaimed book “The Turner House” (her 2015 debut novel), Angela’s work sheds light on complex subjects such as race, identity, place, family, and power.

The novel takes place in Detroit and quickly gained critical acclaim for its themes of migration, housing discrimination, and what it’s like to be a Black American trying to stay afloat during periods of immense decline.

In interviews, she has discussed how Detroit’s East Side, the location of her father’s childhood home, and the city’s shifting values as she was growing up had a major influence on shaping her work.

“The Turner House” garnered Angela significant attention, especially when it won the VCU Cabell First Novel Prize and placed as a National Book Award finalist.

Angela also received nominations for awards such as the PEN/Robert Bingham Prize, the NAACP Image Award, and more.

Angela Flournoy has taught creative writing at institutions like Columbia, the New School, Princeton, UCLA, and Warren Wilson College.

She has also published essays and nonfiction in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, and The Nation, receiving fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Public Library, and others.

She is not only a literary great who transmutes her family’s own stories into best-selling fiction.

She is also an excavator of memory, one who helps redefine what home means in American cities that are constantly changing—sensitive, brave, and deeply rooted in what it means to stay, leave, and return again.

Victoria Jackson (Editor In Chief)

Victoria Jackson is a lifelong student and sharp-eyed documentarian of all things Detroit, from its rich musical roots and cultural icons to its shifting neighborhoods, storied architecture, and underground legends. With her finger firmly on the pulse of both the city’s vibrant past and its rapidly unfolding future, she brings a deeply personal, historically grounded lens to every piece she writes.

Published on: October 3, 2025