Boston-based Kim McLarin is the author of the critically-acclaimed novels *Taming it Down*, *Meeting of the Waters* and *Jump at the Sun*, all published by William Morrow. She is a former staff writer for *The New York Times*, *The Philadelphia Inquirer*, *The Greensboro News & Record* and the Associated Press. Her latest novel, *Jump at the Sun*, was nominated for a 2007 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in fiction, chosen by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association as a 2007 Fiction Honor Book, and chosen by the Massachusetts Center for the Book as a 2007 Massachusetts Book Awards Honor Book. She is writer-in-residence at Emerson College in Boston, and host of *Basic Black*, Boston's longest-running weekly television program devoted exclusively to African American themes, shown on WGBH.