Mary Monroe

Mary Monroe is a New York Times bestselling African-American fiction author. Her first novel, The Upper Room, was published by St. Martin's Press in 1985. She is best known for her novel God Don't Like Ugly (originally published by Dafina Books in Fall 2000), and the series revolving around the characters first introduced in this book.

Biography Mary Monroe was born on December 12, 1949, and is the third of four children, born in Toxey, Alabama. She spent the first part of her life in Alabama and Ohio, moving to Richmond, California, in 1973. She was the first person in her family to graduate from high school. She is a self-taught writer, as she never attended college or took any writing classes.

Her first novel, The Upper Room, was published by St. Martin's Press in New York in 1985, and in London by Allison and Busby in 1986. Her second novel, God Don't Like Ugly, was published in 2000 by Kensington Books, and in 2001 won a PEN Oakland Award for Best Fiction of the Year.

A successful author and mother of two children, Monroe currently resides in Oakland, where she continues to write bestselling novels. Monroe is divorced, she travels the world and writes books based on life experiences and the people around her.

Awards PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award in 2001. Best Southern Author Award for Gonna Lay Down My Burdens in 2004. Maya Angelou Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016 J. California Cooper Memorial Award in 2017 The New York Times Best Seller list for the God Don't Like Ugly Series in September 2006