Upstate

Kalisha Buckhanon’s first novel, Upstate, won an American Library Association Alex Award and was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award in Debut Fiction. Terry McMillan selected her to receive the first Terry McMillan Young Author Award in 2006. A recipient of a 2001 Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship and an Andrew Mellon Fellow, Buckhanon frequently teaches writing and speaks throughout the country. She has a M.F.A. in creative writing from New School University in New York City, and both a B.A. and a M.A. in English language and literature from the University of Chicago. She was born in 1977 in Kankakee, Illinois.

Chadwick Boseman is best known for his roles as Jackie Robinson in the film 42 and James Brown in Get On Up. Along with Heather Simms, Boseman read Kalisha Buckhanon’s Upstate, winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award and a 2006 Audie Award. Boseman has appeared on the television series Persons Unknown, The Express, and Lincoln Heights.  His other television credits include appearances on Law & Order, Third Watch, and All My Children.  A playwright and screenwriter, he is a graduate of Howard University and the British American Dramatic Academy at Oxford.

Heather Simms has appeared in many films, including Stream, Broken Flowers, Head of State, You Belong to Me, and The Nanny Diaries.  She has appeared on several episodes of The Good Wife, Law & Order, As the World Turns, and Friends.  She played the role of Denise Robinson in the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas computer and video game and lent her voice to the video game Red Dead Revolver.  Along with Chadwick Boseman, Simms read Kalisha Buckhanon’s Upstate, which won an AudioFile Earphones Award and a 2006 Audie Award.