Diane McKinney-Whetstone

Diane McKinney-Whetstone Bio

Diane McKinney-Whetstone is the author of seven novels. The latest—Our Gen—explores the lives, loves, regrets, joys, and hopes of feisty sexagenarians who’ve relocated to a 55-plus active living community. Her critically acclaimed first novel, Tumbling, will soon celebrate a quarter century in print. She mines the city of Philadelphia for her material. The blocks and neighborhoods themselves become characters as she tells stories of everyday Black people existing in families and communities; characters faltering, yielding to their desires, falling, fighting, climbing, reaching for, realizing their better selves despite the institutional evils that work so hard to subjugate them. Her essays have appeared in Essence Magazine, Philadelphia Magazine and The Atlantic. Twice awarded the American Library Association Black Caucus Literary Award for Fiction, she is also a recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant. She is a past lecturer in the writing program at the University of Pennsylvania. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband Greg where they shamelessly gush over their 4 grandchildren.

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