Ann Petry: First African American Woman to Sell Over One Million Books
Ann Petry, the first African American female author to sell over one million copies of her book.
Petry was born in 1911 in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, where her father and grandfather ran a drugstore. Petry loved to read and from the age of fourteen she knew she wanted to be a writer. She wrote poetry and short plays in high school, but after graduation she chose the safe route and enrolled in the pharmacy program at the University of Connecticut where she earned her PhG degree. Ann worked in the family business until she married in 1938 and moved to New York.
The direction of Ann's life changed when she took her first job in the advertising department of an African American newspaper, The Amsterdam News. She later became a reporter and editor for the People's Voice, a weekly newspaper, w...