Dionne Ford

Creative Nonfiction Writer

NJ
New Jersey US

Author's Bio

Dionne Ford is author of the memoir Go Back and Get It (Bold Type Books, April, 2023) which was a 2024 finalist for the Hurston Wright Foundation Legacy Award and co-editor of the anthology Slavery's Descendants: Shared Legacies of Race and Reconciliation. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Virginia Quarterly Review, LitHub, The Boston Globe, New Jersey Monthly, Rumpus and Ebony among other publications and won awards from the the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Association of Black Journalists and the Newswomen's Club of New York.  

Grants from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the Geraldine R. Dodge foundation and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hedgebrook and The Cabins at MarthaMOCA have also supported her work.  

She has taught at the Hedgebrook Writers Conference, for Poets & Writers, Inc., StoryStudio Chicago, and in the creative writing departments at Drew University and Fordham University.  In 2023, she was appointed to the New Jersey Reparations Council and is editor of Lynchings in the North, an initiative of the Arthur L. Carter Institute of Journalism at New York University. She lives in New Jersey.

Publications & Prizes

Book:
Go Back and Get It: A Memoir of Race, Inheritance, and Intergenerational Healing (Bold Type Books, 2023)
Prizes won: 
  • National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship
  • National Association of Black Journalists Salute to Excellence Award
  • Newswomen's Club of New York Front Page Award   
  • Sustainable Arts Foundation Grant
  • Louisiana State University Special Collections Research Grant
  • Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Grant

More Information

Gives readings: 
Yes
Travels for readings: 
Yes
Identifies as: 
African American
Prefers to work with: 
Adults, Mental Health, Parents, Religious Studies, Schools, Spirituality, Teachers, Women
Fluent in: 
English
Born in: 
ME
Maine
Raised in: 
NJ
New Jersey
Please note: All information in the Directory is provided by the listed writers or their representatives.
Last update: Jun 09, 2025