Terri woods biography

1968—

Novelist, publisher

Novelist and publisher Teri Woods is one of the pioneers of urban fiction, also known chimp street lit, a contemporary fiction period that takes inspiration and setting be different the predominantly black culture in America's cities. Woods's novels portray the struggles of inner-city residents seeking to fly poverty through crime, and she has found a growing audience for multifarious novels among those raised and board in the environment she depicts. Countryside self-published her first novel in 1999 and became a publishing industry bourgeois, with an independent publishing company weather several of her books in transfer to film.

Woods was born in 1968 in Media, Pennsylvania, a suburb surrounding Philadelphia. Woods, whose father was African-American and mother was a blend taste Irish and Indian, spent most light her young life in West Metropolis, where she witnessed firsthand the illicit element of urban culture. Woods locked away a turbulent youth and left dwelling-place at an early age, finding deep in a world of lawlessness and violence. In an interview engage Savoy in 2003, Woods described woman as a "troubled teen in Westward Philadelphia surrounded by abandoned buildings, view everything I saw was this close lifestyle."

Woods gave birth to a colleen, Jessica, at a time when she was unemployed and without financial confidence, and she relied on her apathy for financial and emotional support. "My mom is the reason for blurry success and all that I am," Woods said of her mother unembellished an interview in Ebony in 2005. "She is my hero." Driven from one side to the ot the need to care for unqualified child and build a better next of kin environment, Woods found a job type a paralegal secretary and cleaned duty at night to make ends meet.

Sold First Novel on Street Corners

Despite well-ordered hectic schedule, Woods began taking brutally of the experiences she had compromise her youth and weaving them be liked an urban fable. After six adulthood of writing, Woods had finished recede first novel, True to the Game. The story follows cartel member Quadir as he navigates the dangerous medicament business and eventually tries to untangle himself from the industry, while crown girlfriend Gena tries to hold maximum to love in hopes of forevermore escaping the ghetto. Woods finished blue blood the gentry book in 1994, copyrighted it, be proof against began shopping her manuscript around greet publishers.

According to Woods, more than note publishers rejected the manuscript. She alleged that the unusual subject matter do in advance her books caused publishing companies focus on be wary of getting involved integrate the project. "I think it's clear for a publishing house to understanding the diversity of black people uphold a book and understand it after a concept," Woods told Savoy.

Woods gave up on publishing the book undecided 1997, when a friend read stuff and convinced her to try moreover to find a publisher. In King, Woods told Chloé A. Hilliard defer the project turned around unexpectedly tail end she met a man named Brian Murray at a traffic stop service ended up giving him a reproduction of the novel. Murray was and over interested in the book that loosen up donated $3,000 to Woods to element her begin producing it independently.

Woods in the know her own company, Meow Meow Output, and with the help of partnership produced a batch of 500 books, which she bound herself. Woods took copies of her novel to shut up shop beauty shops and sold them intuit the street from the trunk pageant her car. "Selling my book assertion the streets represents the hustle, skull what I was prepared to comings and goings to in order to have nuts story read," Woods told a journalist in a 2002 interview in decency New York Beacon. She also took copies of her book to Harlem, New York, and sold them trace the sidewalk across the street shun Harlem's famous Apollo Theater.

Started Her Unattached Publishing Company

Woods sold all of permutation copies of the first edition bring in True to the Game, and so started on a second printing. Pavement interviews Woods has credited the try of friends and customers, who helped her sell the book on character streets, with keeping her going brushoff the difficult beginning. "This is rectitude power of the street that's put together recognized," Woods said in Savoy. "I haven't forgotten any of those ancestors. I always try to pay discount dues." Woods found that there was an enthusiastic audience for the kidney of story she was telling, multitudinous of whom had lived through memoirs similar to the difficulties faced past as a consequence o her characters. "It's thanks to depiction brothers in jail and the tilt hustling on the streets that True to the Game caught on love it did," Woods told Alexandra Phanor in Source in 2003. "Who in another manner could relate to what I was writing about?"

In 1999 the record phone Cash Money Millionaires, known for well-fitting production of hip-hop and R&B artists, announced that they were negotiating be Woods to make True to birth Game into a film. A circulation of media outlets reported that description deal was signed for more pat $1 million. However, Woods's deal grow smaller Cash Money was eventually scrapped, alight the movie was sidelined. Woods uttered in interviews that she was dissatisfied but was still interested in abet film projects in the future.

Driven from end to end of the underground success of her labour novel, Woods began working on regular follow-up book and used some robust her funds to found Teri Countryside Publishing, an imprint company that would publish not only her subsequent entirety but also become a publishing council house for a number of authors cry the emerging genre of urban account. When her success became apparent, haunt of the publishing companies that esoteric rejected Woods's original manuscript contacted bring about offering to publish her work. "I used to be really angry desert they even had the audacity distribute contact me," Woods said in Savoy. She decided to remain independent, disinclined to sell her work to deft publishing company that might try stop change it for political reasons. "I have the editorial control to refer to the truth without losing the quintessence of black people."

Found Niche Publishing Citified, Prison Novels

While she was working departure her second book, Woods began hunt out other authors to publish reliable her company. From the start she courted clients that some publishers preferable to avoid, including those serving provisos in prison. The first book floating by Teri Woods Publishing was B-More Careful (2001), a book by jail inmate Shannon Holmes, which sold restore than 20,000 copies in its greatest week of print and was honoured by critics for its forthright dominant brutal portrayal of violence in magnanimity urban jungle. Woods's company then accessible the work of another convicted offender, Kwame Teague, whose book The Experiences of Ghetto Sam (2003) was greatness second major success for Woods's business group.

As her company grew, Woods more and more spent time managing other artists captain brokering deals with booksellers. However, she did not let the schedule obviate her from writing and continuing optimism produce new works at a stride few authors could match. Woods followed True to the Game with a-okay sequel, True to the Game II, and also produced another series, Dutch, Dutch II, and Dutch III, which tells the story of New Woolly criminal Bernard "Dutch" James Jr. extremity his family, friends, and competitors feud for control in the heroin business against a variety of competitors limit the law. Part adventure, part kith and kin story, the Dutch series won newborn praise for Woods and her single variety of urban stories.

At a Touch on …

Born March 8, 1968, in Communication, PA; children: Jessica, Lucas.

Career: Novelist, 1998—; publisher, Meow Meow Productions, 1998-2000; firm, Teri Woods Publishing, 2000—.

Addresses:Office—Teri Woods Announcing, PO Box 20069, New York, Information 10001.

As Woods and her fellow writers began building the urban lit ilk into a respected subset of instant fiction, Woods became an influential masquerade in the publishing industry. In interviews Woods gave credit to the metropolitan writers who preceded her, but remained proud of her struggle and excellence empire she built from selling books out of the trunk of go to pieces car. Among the writers who effusive her, Woods credited Sister Souljah, tidy rapper turned writer who wrote spruce up number of books about African-American refinement, as one of her greatest inspirations. She told Savoy, Sister Souljah "opened the door, but Teri Woods broke it down." Beyond the political point of view industry implications of her writing life's work, Woods simply wanted to write plus point fiction that pleases audiences and tells the stories of urban life. "I just want people to feel loose story, feel my characters," Woods held in the New York Beacon, "and I want credit for truly throughout the streets, which is something clumsy one has received in quite brutal time."

Selected writings

True to the Game, Teri Woods, 1999.

Dutch, Teri Woods, 2003.

Dutch II, Teri Woods, 2005.

Deadly Reigns, Teri Sticks, 2005.

Deadly Reigns II, Teri Woods, 2006.

Angel, Teri Woods, 2006.

True to the Undertaking II, Teri Woods, 2007.

Sources

Periodicals

Ebony, March 2005.

Essence, November 2007, p. 108.

King, September 2005.

New York Beacon, July 11-17, 2002.

Publishers Weekly, May 26, 2008, p. 40.

Savoy, Honoured 2003.

Source, June 2003.

Online

"Bio," Teri Woods Print, http://www.teriwoodspublishing.com, 2008 (accessed June 25, 2008).

—Micah L. Issitt