Executive editor's view.

I like to think of this issue of BIBR as one devoted to writers. From time-to-time, magazines have special editions devoted to a particular theme. In women's magazines, it's the fashion issue or the relationship issue. In men's magazines, it's usually health and fitness or money. For a magazine that covers the African-American literary market, coming up with a theme is a no-brainer.

This May-June issue features several noteworthy black writers. Among them are some established authors--Stephen Carter, Colson Whitehead and Christopher John Farley--and others like first-timer Ilyasah Shabazz, whose memoir Growing Up X is our cover story.

Courageously, Ilyasah, the daughter of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz, tells her story (beginning on page 54) of growing up with the pressure of having to live up to the expectations of others, and her parent's legacy. It is a difficult story, yet in its retelling, she reveals a resilient spirit in the face of tragedy.

In a certain way, Stephen Carter is also a first-timer. Carter's first novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park, is receiving the kind of critical acclaim rarely seen in publishing. His book is being heralded as the next major work of literary fiction from an African-American writer. And although he is widely known for his 1991 nonfiction work, Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby, Carter has pulled-off a major coup, earning a seven-figure advance for Ocean Park and a second book to follow, making it the highest amount ever offered for a first novel.

In our profile of Carter, which begins on page 46, he admits to feeling somewhat vulnerable as a writer for the first time. After all, he says, "Now if the reader doesn't like it, the buck stops with me."

For Colson Whitehead, author of John Henry Days and The Intuitionist, critical praise came almost immediately, having won Quality Paperback's New Voices Award for his first novel, followed by the Whiting Writers' Award and recently the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award. In this issue of BIBR (page 36), Whitehead--a friend and former neighbor--talks about how being a native New Yorker influences his work.

And finally, Christopher John Farley, a journalist who wrote a biography of the late pop singer Aaliyah that was released last year, talks about covering the music industry (on page 28), and why he is hard at work on his second novel.

I hope you enjoy it.

Evette Porter
BIBR Executive Editor