9 Years in a Drawer with Diane Marie Brown

This week on Black and Published, Nikesha speaks with Diane Marie Brown, author of the novel, Black Candle Women. A  professor at Orange Coast College and a public health professional for the Long Beach Health Department, Diane has a BA and MPH from UCLA and a degree in fiction from USC’s Master of Professional Writing Program. She grew up in Stockton and now lives in Long Beach, California, with her husband, their four daughters, and their dog, Brownie. Black Candle Women is her debut novel.

In our conversation, Diane discusses the incidents in her childhood that made her afraid to take risks in her writing, the experience of winning a publishing contest with a manuscript that had been sitting in a drawer for a decade, and the connection she found between Voodoo and Catholicism that helped her bring to life her novel about the rituals of hoodoo magic.