Denene Millner
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Articles by Denene Millner
When Alexander Graced the Table
When Alexander Graced the Table by Alexander Smalls and Denene Millner with art by Frank Morrison Review posted June 23, 2025. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2025. 36 pages. Review written June 9, 2025, from a library book. Starred Review Here's a gorgeous picture book telling about when chef Alexander Smalls made his first pie for his family's Sunday dinner.
Millner wins 2025 Townsend Prize
Subhead PUTNAM COUNTY The Townsend Prize, presented by Georgia Writers Museum (GWM) and the Atlanta Writers Club, is the most prestigious award for literary fiction given to a Georgia author.Started in 1981 and named for Jim Townsend, founder and long-time editor of Atlanta Magazine, the celebrated prize is awarded every other year. Previous winners have included Alice Walker, Terry Kay, and former G... To access content, please login or purchase a subscription.
Author Denene Millner on Her Writing Career: 'I've Always Been the Nosy One' (Exclusive) Original
Photo: Erskine Issac for iVision Photo Denene Millner recalls the moment she sat with Taraji P. Henson as they cried together. “She was talking about the death of the father of her son and how…he would make rubber band balls for her son,” Millner tells PEOPLE.
The Root's 2023 Best Books by Black Authors
It’s almost time to close the books on 2023 (I know, and I haven’t even started my holiday shopping!). But before we do, I had to take some time to shout out some of the amazing books by Black authors that dropped this year. From moving memoirs to touching romances, there was something for everyone. I was so busy reading I almost forgot there was an actor and writer’s strike going on.
Here and Now with Sandra Bookman: Combating domestic violence in New York City
NEW YORK (WABC) -- On this episode of Here and Now, we discuss combating domestic violence in New York City. Urban Resource Institute, an organization that helps transform the lives of domestic violence survivors and homeless families - with a focus on communities of color and other vulnerable populations - is the largest domestic violence shelter service in the country. It focuses on gender-based violence and homelessness and is the city's only co-living program for survivors and pets.
Duck and Moose: Moose Blasts Off!
The second book in a laugh-out-loud early graphic novel series perfect for fans of Narwhal and Jelly! Quiet-loving Moose’s life is turned upside down by free-wheeling Duck. The two will need to put their differences aside if they’re ever going to be neighbors…or friends! Moose loves playing astronaut. Imagining his helmet, his seatbelt, and rocketing off into space are his favorite things to do! One day, Moose invites Duck to play with him.
One Blood - Historical Novel Society
Lolo and Tommy’s marriage begins with a lie, originating in Lolo’s abusive childhood, the scars of which prevent pregnancy. But it isn’t her lie alone which echoes down the years. Carrying childhood trauma into adulthood, Lolo is obsessively fearful of the vulnerability of girlhood, womanhood, and their dangerous combination with Blackness. She convinces Tommy he is the cause of their infertility.
Duck and Moose: Duck Moves In!
The first book in a laugh-out-loud early graphic novel series perfect for fans of Narwhal and Jelly! Quiet-loving Moose’s life is turned upside down by free-wheeling Duck. The two will need to put their differences aside if they’re ever going to be neighbors…or friends! Moose loves peace and quiet, relaxing, living alone, and spring! He can’t wait for the arrival of sun, flowers, and…a new neighbor?! Duck just landed himself a new home.
The Official Lineup for the 2023 Root Institute Original
For the second year in a row, The Root Institute assembles in our nation’s capital to bring together America’s greatest Black minds. For one full day, The Root’s newsroom shares the stage at Howard University with Black luminaries from every corner of the nation as we focus on building a blueprint for a better Black America.
‘One Blood: A Novel’
One drop. That's all they said it took to determine someone's race. Just one drop, the tiniest of amounts, and everything changed: no access, no rights, no cold drink from a fountain on a hot day, no freedoms. No safety. No say in the matter. And in the new novel, "One Blood," by Denene Millner, no way to change it, but time. The first night Grace saw her Maw Maw catch a baby, she had a mess of feelings: a little sick, scared, but mostly awed at what Maw Maw called a miracle.
How a Real-Life Adoption Secret Inspired Denene Millner's Latest Novel Original
Erskine Isaac for Ivision PhotoErskine Isaac for Ivision Photo Denene Millner is a New York Times-bestselling author, award-winning journalist, and director of the Denene Millner Books imprint. She has written 30 books for adults, teens, and children, and her latest, "One Blood," comes out on Sept. 5. The novel is about the connection between three women: a birth mother who had her child taken away; the adoptive mother who raised that child; and the child herself.
These 10 New Books By Black Women Have Us Hyped For The Fall
MadameNoire Featured Video Fall is approaching fast, and it’s the perfect time to cozy up with a warm drink and a good read at home as we feel the hot summer air transition into a cool autumn breeze. If you’re looking for a new book to dive into or to diversify your bookshelf, there are a number of amazing Black women authors who are killing it in the game right now and are sure to keep you turning from one page to the next with their brilliantly written pieces.
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow
Pre-Order Available Formats Print Illustrated by New York Times best-selling artist Bea Jackson, this poignant story speaks to Lunella Lafayette’s insecurities about her hair as School Picture Day approaches. Sure, Lunella may be a genius Super Hero (Moon Girl), but when someone makes unkind comments about her hair, she questions whether she needs to change it for School Picture Day. She is, after all, still a 13-year-old girl.
5-Minute Shark Stories
Dive into amazing true tales about baby sharks, surprising shark friendships, daring shark rescues, swimming with sharks, and more about these fierce and fascinating fish. These 12 fin-tastic true tales about sharks are all the ideal length to be read aloud in five minutes, making them perfect for bedtime, story time, or any time.
The Sweet Outdoors
Pre-Order Available Formats Print & E-Book The Sugar Rush Racers from WRECK-IT RALPH are catapulted out of their arcade game and into the world of a young girl named Molly, in this chapter book series. Molly can’t wait for her camping trip with troop! Until she learns there are NO DEVICES ALLOWED, but the Sugar Rush Racers convince Molly to sneak her tablet into the camping trip.
Victory is Sweet
Pre-Order Available Formats Print & E-Book The Sugar Rush Racers from WRECK-IT RALPH are catapulted out of their arcade game and into the world of a young girl named Molly, in this chapter book series. Molly McGinty is surprised when she comes home from the arcade and Vanellope and her friends are in her tablet! But when she fights with her best friend and needs help with her go-kart she has no one to turn to but the Sugar Rush Racers.
Psalms For Black Girls: Bruh, Marriage Is No Longer Relationship Goals For Black Women
MadameNoire Featured Video The day a judge made my divorce final, I showed up to the courthouse in a bright yellow dress, face full of Mented cosmetics, locs freshly twisted, smelling like grapefruit Jo Malone, because this was, next to the birth of my babies, supposed to be the happiest day of my life—a new beginning that I’d dreamed about for nearly a decade. I wanted to look and smell like I expected to feel: beautiful. Happy.
PSALMS FOR BLACK GIRLS: Y’all Want Black Women To Be Bad Babies Mama Real Bad And And It Shows
MadameNoire Featured Video Let me just say this right off rip: Raven Yates, the Texas mom accused of leaving her two kids to fend for themselves for almost two months while she allegedly traveled to Alabama, is trash if she really did abandon her 12- and three-year-old children. Full stop. There is zero excuse for leaving one’s babies alone with no food, supplies, or the physical, mental, and emotional protection of a parent or grownup who cares about, supports and assures their well-being.
PSALMS FOR BLACK GIRLS: Forget Ron DeSantis, We Can Teach African American Studies To Our Own Damn Kids
MadameNoire Featured Video While they yell and snarl and gnash their teeth, demanding everybody from U.S. Supreme Court nominees to local school board members to the neighborhood dog catcher denounce teaching students all the ways American racism has run this country into the damn ground, I can’t help but to cackle—especially at the debacle around African American studies.
PSALMS FOR BLACK GIRLS: No Shade To Christianity, But The Spirit Of Zen That Led To Ultimate Happiness
MadameNoire Featured Video My mother was a praying woman—kept the scriptures at her fingertips and The Great I Am on her lips, in service to her faith. Didn’t too many Sundays pass by when Bettye wasn’t tugging on her church hat in the bathroom mirror at 9 a.m., and out the door five minutes later, headed to a day’s worth of Bible studying, gospel singing, Good Lawdy exaltation and the occasional jog for Jesus. She was dedicated to the ritual, found solace in The Word—strength in the believing.
One Blood - Denene Millner
filled star filled star filled star filled star star unfilled (106) Print copy A birth mother Raised by her beloved grandmother in tension-filled, segregated Virginia, Grace is barely a teenager when she loses her Maw Maw and is shipped up North to live with her formidably ambitious Aunt Hattie in a society of stifling respectability.
People Who Are Big Mad Brittney Griner Is Free Don’t Value Black Women
Britney Griner, the star WNBA player sentenced to nine years in a Russian penal colony for showing up to play basketball in the embattled country with a miniscule amount of medical cannabis in her vape pen, is finally free. This after Griner spent just shy of 300 harrowing days behind bars in Russia—hater of America, at war with U.S. defense partner, Ukraine, patently anti-gay, not so fond of women’s equality, and outright hostile to Black folk.
How Is It That Black Votes Matter But Black Lives-Not So Much?
So, I have a new dog, Franklin, who is 1000 watts of big puppy energy that sparks at about 7 a.m. and burns hard and bright deep into the evening, which means I spend a lot of time trying to wear him out, doing what I’d barely ever do if I wasn’t a dog mom: I walk. A lot. And all that walking has me seeing things I’d hardly noticed—interacting with people I hadn’t before. It’s… interesting.
PSALMS FOR BLACK GIRLS: Stop Weaponizing Women’s Weight Against Their Health
MadameNoire Featured Video So, a national coalition of women’s health organizations and advocates recently came up with the bright idea to have physicians “counsel” midlife women on our weight at doctor’s visits and now I want to punch a wall because my God, really, do we need to officially weaponize yet another group of people to talk crazy to us about our bodies? I mean, I’m 54 now and let pop culture tell it, if I’m looking like my celeb contemporaries—like Mary J. Blige or J.
The Crisis In Jackson, Mississippi Ain’t About Water, It’s About Whiteness
MadameNoire Featured Video Right now, in Jackson, Mississippi, in the year of our Lord 2022, whenever some 150,000 residents run their tap, brown or yellow sludge is likely to come rushing out, rendering their water about as useful as a bucket of dirty liquid hauled from a mudhole in remote parts of Angola.
PSALMS FOR BLACK GIRLS: The Gift And The Joke That Is Student Loan Debt Forgiveness
MadameNoire Featured Video Let’s be clear: with the cost of gas topping four dollars a gallon, the grocery store running our pockets, and rents consistently too damn high, that lil’ 10-20 stacks Uncle Joe wiped from the student loan debt of 43 million borrowers is right on time. Let’s be clear about this, too, though: that debt forgiveness is woefully inadequate, particularly for Black women.
PSALMS FOR BLACK GIRLS: Those Rainbows Deserve Your Attention
This is where my head was last week when I pulled into the parking lot of Trader Joe’s here in Midtown, Atlanta, and immediately noticed rainbows flashing from practically every car windshield in my immediate vicinity. I stretched my head backward and then forward, trying to get a glimpse of this ribbon in the sky, but it was nowhere to be seen. And then I looked up. Right there, looking like a miracle, was a double sunbow—two rainbows ringing our planet’s brightest star.
PSALMS FOR BLACK GIRLS: Our Daughters Are Not Invisible
MadameNoire Featured Video I was digging through an old jewelry box recently and found this gem—a color slide of me at about age eight or nine, in a ballerina outfit. I remember the moments when it was taken; it was picture day for my ballet class in Willingboro, NJ. I went to the studio thinking I looked so pretty in my tutu and hair ribbons. I left thinking something was wrong with me.
PSALMS FOR BLACK GIRLS: My Daughters Should Know How Anti-Abortion Affected Their Grandmothers’ Lives, So I Told Them
MadameNoire Featured Video My older daughter, Mari, was 10 years old when I told her what abortion is.
PSALMS FOR BLACK GIRLS: My Daddy Loves His Children Fiercely Like So Many Black Fathers Do
But beyond being a solid provider and protector, my father was and is a good dude. He is kind and encouraging and doesn’t hesitate to say, “I love you,” and not only mean it but show it; it was he who talked me into being a writer and, to this day, the first person I call when a new book deal is on the horizon, or my essays and stories are published, or I’ve hustled up some cash to run my household much in the same way he managed to all those years for our family.
PSALMS FOR BLACK GIRLS: Justice Ketanji Jackson And The Myth That Black Women Ain’t Magic
MadameNoire Featured Video Source: MANDEL NGAN / Getty President Joe Biden nominated a real one for the soon-to-be-open seat on the Supreme Court—the Honorable Ketanji Brown Jackson, a federal appellate judge who, if confirmed, would be the first Black woman to serve on the highest court in the land since its inception 233 years ago. Read that again.
This Valentine’s Day, I Chose The Revolutionary Act Of Loving Me
MadameNoire Featured Video Source: Peathegee Inc / Getty I liked being married, and then I didn’t, and at some point, I went from actually wanting to cook and clean and handle the laundry and manage the family schedule and do all the things supposedly good wives do, to waking up first thing in the morning and dreaming—dreaming about what it would be like to just… go. To be somewhere else, anywhere else, where I could just be something other than profoundly unhappy.
You don’t have to wait until you’re middle-aged to find your happy place
It just creeped up, this malaise — slow and heavy and full, like a delivery truck lumbering down a residential street, stirring the trees and rumbling the concrete in its wake. My funk was real. And as a result, my writing — the skill that’s financed my life, won me accolades and brought me immeasurable joy— was shifting. Suffering. Painting with words felt less like hues of hot pink and neon orange on a fresh canvas, much more like gloomy shades of gray scribbled on scraps.
Screw That Princeton Mom Letter: Preparing OUR Girls for Love at College
Here’s what Susan Patton, a nice, Upper East Side Jewish mom who graduated Princeton Class ’77, wants my daughters to know: when they get to the Ivy Leagues, they better snag that M.R.S. degree while they’re getting that baccalaureate because if they’re not married by graduation, they’ll spend the rest of their lives with nothing but a herd of cats to keep them warm at night—or worse, will end up in a dead-end marriage with a dumb, broke, non-Ivy League loser who’ll make life absolutely...
Jada Pinkett-Smith On Willow Smith's Hair, Beauty And Her Daughter's Right To Own Her Own Body
When Willow Smith debuted a freshly-shaven head earlier this year, and then later put all manner of dye into her short ‘do, black folk practically scheduled an 18th Century-styled stake burning for Jada Pinkett-Smith. Jada’s crime? Letting her precocious 12-year-old daughter, a singer and actress with an itchy Instagram and Twitter finger, do whatever she wants with her hair. Because, sweet baby Jesus, what black mother on this here planet lets her child scalp herself and dye her hair? On purpose?
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Talking to Your Kids About Race Is Like Talking to Them About Safe Sex. Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late.
For questions about subscriptions or your Slate Plus feed, check our FAQ. Episode Notes On this week’s episode: Jamilah and Elizabeth are joined by Denene Millner. Denene is an award-winning journalist, New York Times best-selling author, founder and editor of the parenting website MyBrownBaby.com, runs the inprint Denene Millner Books, and hosts two shows: Speakeasy with Denene and A Seat at the Table. We have two listener questions this week.
15 Diverse Back to School Books Kids Will Love
Press enter or click to view image in full size It’s back to school time and we’re of course prepping for a successful year by reading great books! It feels a little weird prepping for a new school year when there’s so much uncertainty surrounding education right now. On top of all of the new safety protocols we have to follow due to the pandemic, we also have to reckon with racism and injustice in our education system. Thankfully there are scores of us fighting to bring about change and equity .
15 Diverse Back to School Books Kids Will Love
Illustration by Frank Morrison from the book I Got The School Spirit by Connie Schofield-Morrison It’s back to school time and we’re of course prepping for a successful year by reading great books! It feels a little weird prepping for a new school year when there’s so much uncertainty surrounding education right now. On top of all of the new safety protocols we have to follow due to the pandemic, we also have to reckon with racism and injustice in our education system.
Parenting for Liberation: A Guide for Raising Black Children--A Conversation with Trina Greene Brown and Denene Millner
Charis welcomes Trina Greene Brown, author of Parenting for Liberation: A Guide for Raising Black Children and Denene Millner, author of My Brown Baby, for an essential conversation about how, in this time of perpetual state and interpersonal racial violence, Black families can imagine methods of parenting rooted in liberation rather than fear.
For the Culture: Why Andre Harrell Always Moved The Crowd
No one could have predicted what was to come of this Harlem-born, Bronx-bred lyricist in a slick suit, one half of the duo, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, proclaiming himself a “champagne rapper” so rich, so supernatural, so grand, mere mortals could never compare. But Andre O’Neal Harrell knew things. He knew that he was of a particular world—one that was concrete and grit and hard times, sure, but one that was shiny and glamorous and desirable, too.
Early Sunday Morning
In this heartwarming story of love and family, a community comes together to help a young girl find the courage to lift her mighty voice. Sundays are June’s favorite days because she gets to spend it with Mommy, Daddy, and her brother, Troy. Next Sunday is more special than most, because she will be leading the youth choir in front of her entire church. June loves to sing.
What You Need To Know: Virtual Natural Hair Services
Georgia Public Broadcasting’s new series What You Need To Know: Coronavirus provides succinct, fact-based information to help you get through the coronavirus pandemic with your health and sanity intact. With salons closing across the country due to the coronavirus, navigating hair care can be an inconvenience and a serious point of stress, particularly for black women.
FRESH PRINCESS | Kirkus Reviews
An obsessed narrator creates an alphabet book overrun with rabbits, much to the chagrin of an owl who wants to create a “proper, respectable” alphabet book. The picture book begins, “A is for A rabbit,” an illustration of a large brown rabbit taking up most of the recto.
Everybody Loves the Sunshine: Finding Joy in Blackness
by Denene Millner — Jan 23, 2020 Though I’ve been a journalist for almost 35 years, I don’t write about my father a lot. James Millner fiercely guards his privacy and is so much more satisfied being humble and living a simple life, that I have no other choice but to respect that he’d rather I not put all his business in the street.
Everybody Loves The Sunshine
We close out the first season of Speakeasy with Denene with SUNSHINE, the password for this episode. I offer a glimpse of some of the people and things that bring sunshine in my life. I talk with my biggest champion --- my father. I then hear from Nic Stone and Angie Thomas, two literary giants. Finally, I dance to some of my favorite music. Though I’ve been a journalist for almost 35 years, I don't write about my father a lot.
Happy Book Birthday, Just Like a Mama, the newest addition to Denene Millner Books
Oh happy day for Just Like a Mama, the debut book on my all-new Denene Millner Books imprint with Simon & Schuster! Today is Just Like a Mama’s book birthday and I’m so proud to present to the world this glorious children’s picture book, penned by the equally glorious Alice Faye Duncan, the genius behind the NAACP Award-nominated board book, Honey Baby Sugar Child, the heartfelt Memphis, Martin and the Mountaintop and the gorgeous A Song for Gwendolyn Brooks.
Killer Mike's Push for Freedom on Speakeasy with Denene | MyBrownBaby
This summer, on a raucous girl’s trip to Las Vegas, I got a tattoo. I know, I know—so cliché. But I’d been threatening to get one for years—a lady bug to honor my mother, who always was and still remains my good luck charm. But while I was standing there waiting for my turn in the chair, I decided to go a different route: my first tat would be a word that holds significant meaning—weight—with me. That word is FREE.
Killer Mike's Push For Freedom
The password for this episode of Speakeasy with Denene is FREEDOM. We spend the whole show with Atlanta-based rapper, Killer Mike. He tells me that freedom weighs heavily on him everyday. He shares his value of economic freedom, and his mission to protect freedom of speech in rap music. This summer, on a raucous girl’s trip to Las Vegas, I got a tattoo. I know, I know—so cliché.
Speakeasy with Denene's Favorite Things of 2019
by Denene Millner — Dec 26, 2019 What a whirlwind 2019 has been! So many beautiful things transpired for me personally and for that, I’m so very grateful. My babies are healthy and happy, business is booming, my friendships are solid and I’m all good. What more could a woman ask for? Of course, a highlight of this year was the debut of my new podcast, Speakeasy with Denene.
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