Pearl Cleage

Pearl Cleage is Distinguished Artist in Residence at the Alliance Theatre. She serves as the city’s first Poet Laureate and is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Dramatists Guild. Flyin’ West, Blues for an Alabama Sky, What I Learned in Paris, and Angry, Raucous and Shamelessly Gorgeous are among the plays she has premiered at the Alliance. She served as playwright to the Palefsky Collision Project for fourteen years and collaborated with her husband, writer Zaron W. Burnett, Jr., and artist Radcliffe Bailey on In My Granny’s Garden, a picture book for children that became an interactive theater piece for very young audiences. She is the author of eight novels, including What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, an Oprah Book Club selection and New York Times bestseller. Cleage and Burnett were recently honored by Mayor Dickens who announced the new Pearl Cleage and Zaron W. Burnett Center for Culture and Creativity in Atlanta’s West End. Something Moving: A Meditation on Maynard grows out of Cleage’s active role in Jackson’s first campaign and her two years as a member of his administration. She is the mother of Deignan Lomax, and the proud grandmother of Michael, Chloe, Bailey, Averie and Ethan.