Pioneering author and publisher Tina McElroy Ansa dies at age 74

Tina McElroy Ansa, an acclaimed author, journalist, and pioneer whose vivid narrative captured the sweetness, complexity, and resilience of life within the black South, has joined her ancestors.

On September 10, 2024, the author died at the age of 74 in her home on the Georgia coast. After her unexpected death, McElroy Ansa’s good friend Wanda Lloyd, whom she met during her freshman 12 months at Spelman College, wrote Facebook post announcing the news.

“It is with immeasurable sadness and a broken heart that I share the news of the death of Tina McElroy Ansa, my sister-friend since we were paired as roommates our freshman year at Spelman College. I am sharing this on behalf of Tina’s family,” the post reads. “Tina was an award-winning novelist, journalist, writer-doula, advocate for a huge number of her “good little students,” founding father of Sea Island Writers Retreat, publisher of DownSouth Press, storyteller, public speaker, podcaster, editor, and avid gardener. She was an advocate for her adopted community of St. Simons Island, Georgia, and loved her hometown of Macon, Georgia.”

Born in Macon, Georgia, in 1949, McElroy Ansa was the youngest of 5 children of Walter J. and Nellie McElroy. In 1971, she and Lloyd graduated with a level in English from an all-women’s HBCU. She began her storytelling profession as an editor at The Atlanta Constitution, where she became the primary black woman to affix the editorial staff of the publication. After moving from editor to reporter to features editor, McElroy Ansa took a break from journalism to put in writing her first novel, “Baby of the Family.”

Inspired by the stories and experiences she heard on her porch growing up, McElroy Ansa’s writing wove generations of family, spirit, and tradition into narratives that spoke on to the essence of the Black Southern experience. Through her sharp prose and deep exploration of family, culture, and community, she helped shape a brand new narrative for Black women in fiction.

“She was one of the women writing African-American literature in the 1980s and 1990s,” Lloyd said. Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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After her debut novel won the New York Times Notable Book of the Year award in 1989, McElroy Ansa wrote Ugly Ways, The Hand I Fan With, You Know Better, and Taking After Mudear: A (*74*). In addition to her own writing, the veteran journalist-turned-author was captivated with supporting other black writers. In 2007, she founded DownSouth Press Publishing House to publish and promote “African American literature that will enrich, enlighten, and edify the world.”

Similarly, in 2004, McElroy Ansa organized the Sea Island Writers Retreat, an annual event designed to assist emerging and established writers improve their skills in writing fiction, nonfiction, memoir, and editing.

In addition to being a author, publisher and mentor, McElroy Ansa was also a wife. In 1979, she married cinematographer Jonée Ansa, with whom she lived until his death in 2020. Before her death, McElroy Ansa was reportedly working on her sixth novel, a nonfiction book titled “Secrets of a Bogart Queen” and an October film festival celebrating the a hundredth anniversary of the Harrington School, the primary school for African-American children in St. Simons, Georgia.

According to Lloyd McElroy, Ansa “was a leader in the writing community and a friend to more people than we can imagine.”