Kim McLarin is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Taming It Down, Meeting of the Waters, and Jump at the Sun, as well as the memoir Divorce Dog: Motherhood, Men, and Midlife. McLarin is also co-author of the memoir Growing Up X with Ilyasah Shabazz. Jump at the Sun was chosen as a 2007 Fiction Honor Book by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. The novel was also nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award and selected by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association as a 2007 Fiction Honor Book. McLarin's nonfiction writing has appeared in the New York Times, Glamour, the Washington Post, Slate, The Root, and other publications. She is a former staff writer for the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Greensboro News & Record, and the Associated Press. McLarin teaches at Emerson College; previously she taught at Northeastern University and Fairfield University. McLarin appears regularly on the Emmy Award– winning show Basic Black, Boston's long-running television program devoted to African American themes, which airs weekly on WGBH-TV. She is a member of the board of PEN New England and Boston Day and Evening Academy. McLarin’s latest book is an essay collection titled Womanish: A Grown Black Woman Speaks on Love and Life, which Kirkus Reviews praised as "bold, well-crafted essays on living, loving, and striving while black."