Veronica Chambers

Veronica Chambers is a contemporary and prolific author, journalist, novelist, essayist, teacher and magazine innovator.  An Afro-Latina who was born in Panama and raised in Brooklyn, Chambers has been a top editor and writer for New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Glamour, Good Housekeeping, Premiere, among other esteemed publications.

"Mama's Girl" redirects here. For the Philippine drama film, see Mama's Girl (film).
Veronica Chambers
Veronica Chambers in New York City
Notable awards2013 James Beard Award for Writing and Literature

Chambers recently edited Queen Bey: A Celebration of the Power and Creativity of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter and wrote The Meaning of Michelle: 16 Writers on Our Iconic First Lady and How Her Journey Inspires Our Own. Time Magazine named the piece one of the top ten non-fiction books of 2017. In 2012, Chambers was the recipient of the prestigious James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook for her work on, Yes Chef which she co-authored with Marcus Samuelsson.

Education, Teaching, and Fellowships

Chambers attended Simon's Rock College of Bard in Great Barrington, Massachusetts where she received a B.A. in Literary Studies and was Summa Cum Laude.  She often writes about her Afro-Latina heritage. In 1997, she received critical acclaim for her memoir, Mama’s Girl, which the New Yorker said was, “a troubling testament to grit and mother love … one of the finest and most evenhanded in the genre in recent years.” Since the book has been published, it has been course adopted by hundreds of high schools and colleges.

Chambers has taught writing, at Stanford University, Bowdoin College, Bard College at Simon's Rock, and the Rutgers University Summer Program among other writing workshops. She has been a Fellow in the following programs: Freedom Forum at Columbia University, Media Fellows Program at Japan Society in New York and Tokyo, JSK Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University in Creative Writing, Fellow for the National Endowment of the Arts, the British-American Project in Newcastle upon Tyne England, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, and the Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University.  Additionally, Chambers has also been a Lecturer for the Young Women's Writing Program at Smith College and also for the Environmental Communication Program at Stanford University.

Career

Chambers has written more than twenty works of fiction, non-fiction and children's literature and is the co-author of four New York Times bestsellers. Her essays have appeared in anthologies such as The Bitch in the House and The Body as well as periodicals as diverse as The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Parade and O, The Oprah Magazine.

After the release of the best seller, Yes Chef which she co-authored with Marcus Samuelsson, The New York Times critic Dwight Garner called Chambers and Yes Chef “one of the great culinary stories of our time.”[1] President Bill Clinton raved, “In this memoir, Marcus Samuelsson tells a story that reaches past racial and national divides to the foundation of family, hope and downright good food.”  In 2015, Chambers and Samuelsson published a young adult version of Yes, Chef called Make it Messy which Barnes and Noble named one of their best teen books of the year.

In 2014, Chambers co-wrote the New York Times bestseller, Everybody’s Got Something, with noted journalist, Robin Roberts. In May 2016, Random House published 32 Yolks, the memoir Chambers co-authored with celebrated chef, Eric Ripert. Chambers’ other memoir collaborations include Wake Up Happy with award-winning morning TV host and NFL Hall of Famer, Michael Strahan and Emperor of Sound with multi-platinum producer, Timbaland.

In 2018, she joined the Archival Storytelling Team at The New York Times where she has been the editor of Past Tense, a new initiative devoted to publishing articles based on photographs from their six million photo archive.

Magazine Innovator

As a Director of Brand Development at Hearst Corporation, Chambers and an executive team led the relaunch of Good Housekeeping and Goodhousekeeping.com. Chambers also developed and launched the magazine, Glam Latina under Condé Nast and as well as launch Women’s Day Latina for the Hearst Company.

Children's Books

Chambers has also written more than a dozen books for children, and received critical acclaim for Celia Cruz, Queen of Salsa, the body confidence young adult novel Plus, and her most recent young adult novel The Go-Between, about teens, race, culture and class in Los Angeles.[2]

Social Impact

In 2014, Veronica Chambers and her husband, Jason, launched the Loud Emily scholarship, in honor of Emily Fisher, Veronica's mentor in philanthropy.  The Loud Emily scholarship provides full tuition for two girls to the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls in New York.  The girls are chosen on the basis of essays and short creative videos that explain how and why they use their voices and their music, to speak loudly, for the causes they believe in.

A graduate of Bard College at Simon's Rock, Chambers and her husband have endowed three scholarships at the college in the fields of music and literature. For the last ten years, she has served on the Board of Overseers of Bard College at Simon's Rock, including the chairmanship of the Academic Affairs Committee.

List of works

This is a list of works by Veronica Chambers.[3]

  • Between Harlem and Heaven: Afro-Asian-American Cookbook (Flatiron/Macmillan, 2018)
  • The Meaning of Michelle: 16 Writers on Our Iconic First Lady and How Her Journey Inspires Our Own, Editor (St. Martin's Press, 2017)
  • The Go-Between Young Adult novel (Delacorte/Random House, 2017)
  • 32 Yolks (co-written with Eric Ripert) (Random House, 2016)
  • Wake Up Happy (co-written with Michael Strahan) (37 Ink, 2015)                  
  • Everybody’s Got Something (co-written with Robin Roberts) Grand Central Publishing, 2014)              
  • Yes Chef (co-written with Marcus Samuelsson) (Random House, 2012)          
  • Kickboxing Geishas: How Modern Japanese Women Are Changing Their Nation (Free Press, 2007)
  • The Joy of Doing Things Badly: A Girls’ Guide to Love, Life and Foolish Bravery (Doubleday, 2006)
  • Miss Black America (Doubleday, 2005)
  • Celia Cruz, Queen of Salsa (Dial, 2005)
  • Having It All? Black Women and Success (Doubleday, 2003)
  • Double Dutch: Jump Rope, Rhyme and Sisterhood (Hyperion, 2002)
  • Quinceañera Means Sweet Fifteen (Hyperion, 2001)
  • Marisol & Magdalena (Hyperion, 1998)
  • The Harlem Renaissance (Chelsea House, 1998)
  • Amistad Rising (Harcourt Brace, 1998)
  • Mama's Girl (Riverhead, 1996)
  • Poetic Justice: Filmmaking South Central Style (Dell, 1992)   

Anthology Contributions
  • The Bitch is Back, Editor Cathi Hanauer (William Morrow, 2016)
  • Black Cool, Editor Rebecca Walker (Soft Skull, 2012)
  • Mommy Wars, Editor Leslie Steiner (Random House, 2006)
  • Rhetorical Contexts, Editors LouAnn Thompson and Suzanne Webb (Longman Publishers, 2003)
  • ¿Que Te Parece? Editors James Lee, Doly Jesuita Young, et al. (McGraw Hill, 2003)
  • The Bitch In the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage, Editor Cathi Hanauer (William Morrow, 2002)
  • Black Hair: Art, Style and Culture, Editor Ima Ebong (Rizzoli, 2001)
  • Listen Up: Voices of the Next Feminist Generation, Editors Barbara Findlen (Seal Press, 2001)
  • Becoming American: Personal Essays by First Generation Women, Editor Meri Danquah (Hyperion, 2000)
  • Growing Up Ethnic in America, Editor Maria Mazzioti Gilliam and Jennifer Gillian (Penguin Books, 1999)


References
  1. Garner, Dwight. "A Life Spent in Sugar and Spice". The New York Times.
  2. "Veronica Chambers".
  3. "VeronicaChambers.com". VeronicaChambers.com. Retrieved March 26, 2018.
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