Pearl Cleage

Pearl Cleage is a writer and political activist whose works explore racism, sexism, and the experiences of Black American women. Her father Albert Cleage (also known as Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman) was an activist, reverend, and founder of the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church. When Cleage was a child, her family moved to Detroit, Michigan. She studied playwriting at Howard University before transferring to Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, where she graduated in 1971. During this time she married politician Michael Lomax, though the two later divorced in 1979. Cleage worked as press secretary to Maynard Johnson, the mayor of Atlanta, in the mid-1970s before quitting her job to pursue writing full-time. Since then, she has written many well-received plays, essays, and novels, including the play Flyin’ West and the novel What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day. She often works in collaboration with her husband, writer Zaron W. Burnett, Jr. In 2020, Cleage was named Atlanta’s first Poet Laureate.