Girls Write Now is thrilled to honor Melissa Harris-Perry with the Trailblazer Award.
“Once again we are reckoning with just how profoundly our world is affected by the stories we tell and retell. Girls Write Now ensures that young women get to be the authors and the protagonists of those stories. It is more important than ever that girls have the tools to tell their stories and the audiences who will listen. In a world that is gleefully silencing women, we must encourage them to shout, and scribble, and rhyme, and narrate, and imagine. I am honored to be in solidarity with Girls Write Now.”
—Melissa Harris-Perry, Recipient of the “Trailblazer” Award
Melissa Harris-Perry is the Maya Angelou Presidential Chair at Wake Forest University. There she is the Executive Director of the Pro Humane Institute and founding director of the Anna Julia Cooper Center. Melissa is Editor-at-Large at ELLE.com. She hosted the television show “Melissa Harris-Perry” from 2012-2016 on weekend mornings on MSNBC. She is the author of the award-winning Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought, and Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America. Harris-Perry received her B.A. degree in English from Wake Forest University and her Ph.D. degree in political science from Duke University. She also studied theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Harris-Perry previously served on the faculty of the University of Chicago, Princeton University, and Tulane University.