Background
Attica Locke was born in 1974 in Houston, Texas, United States. Her parents were civil rights activists. She has four siblings.
Attica Locke. Photo by Jenny Walters.
4410 Cook Rd, Houston, TX 77072, United States
Alief Hastings High School where Attica Locke studied.
Northwestern University, Chicago, IL 60611, United States
Northwestern University where Attica Locke studied.
2015
Attica Locke with Carlito Rodriguez and Eric Haywood pose at the WGAw Committee of Black Writers and LGBT Writers Committee's evening with Fox's Empire at The Writers Guild of America, West on June 22, 2015.
2015
Attica Locke Danny Strong pose at the WGAw Committee of Black Writers and LGBT Writers Committee on June 22, 2015.
2016
Attica Locke and Tim Blaylock attend the Young Literati 8th Annual Toast at Avalon on February 20, 2016.
2016
300 Doheny Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90048, United States
Attica Locke with Malcolm Spellman and Danny Strong at the 16th Annual AFI Life Achievement Award at Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles At Beverly Hills on January 8, 2016.
2019
4469 Admiralty Way, Marina Del Rey, CA 90292, United States
Attica Locke speaks at first annual AAFCA TV Honors at California Yacht Club on August 11, 2019.
Attica Locke with Barbara Boxer and Patt Morrison at Bookfest.
Attica Locke with Cilius Victor.
Attica Locke
4807 Caroline St, Houston, TX 77004, United States
Attica Locke with Sheila Jackson Lee and Clarisse Freeman at the Houston Museum of African American Culture.
4469 Admiralty Way, Marina Del Rey, CA 90292, United States
Attica Locke with Aunjanue Ellis, Asante Blackk, Niecy Nash, Jharrel Jerome, and Marsha Stephanie Blake at the first annual AAFCA TV Honors at California Yacht Club on August 11, 2019.
4807 Caroline St, Houston, TX 77004, United States
Attica Locke at the Houston Museum of African American Culture.
Attica Locke with Jennifer Weiner.
4807 Caroline St, Houston, TX 77004, United States
Attica Locke and John Guess Jr at the Houston Museum of African American Culture.
Attica Locke and Keija Parssinen.
Attica Locke at Serpent's Tail.
2015
Attica Locke with Carlito Rodriguez and Eric Haywood pose at the WGAw Committee of Black Writers and LGBT Writers Committee's evening with Fox's Empire at The Writers Guild of America, West on June 22, 2015.
2015
Attica Locke Danny Strong pose at the WGAw Committee of Black Writers and LGBT Writers Committee on June 22, 2015.
2016
Attica Locke and Tim Blaylock attend the Young Literati 8th Annual Toast at Avalon on February 20, 2016.
2016
300 Doheny Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90048, United States
Attica Locke with Malcolm Spellman and Danny Strong at the 16th Annual AFI Life Achievement Award at Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles At Beverly Hills on January 8, 2016.
2019
4469 Admiralty Way, Marina Del Rey, CA 90292, United States
Attica Locke speaks at first annual AAFCA TV Honors at California Yacht Club on August 11, 2019.
4410 Cook Rd, Houston, TX 77072, United States
Alief Hastings High School where Attica Locke studied.
Northwestern University, Chicago, IL 60611, United States
Northwestern University where Attica Locke studied.
Edgar Allan Po Award which Attica Locke received in 2018.
Attica Locke receiving 2018 Edgar Allan Po Award.
Attica Locke with Barbara Boxer and Patt Morrison at Bookfest.
Attica Locke with Cilius Victor.
Attica Locke
4807 Caroline St, Houston, TX 77004, United States
Attica Locke with Sheila Jackson Lee and Clarisse Freeman at the Houston Museum of African American Culture.
4469 Admiralty Way, Marina Del Rey, CA 90292, United States
Attica Locke with Aunjanue Ellis, Asante Blackk, Niecy Nash, Jharrel Jerome, and Marsha Stephanie Blake at the first annual AAFCA TV Honors at California Yacht Club on August 11, 2019.
4807 Caroline St, Houston, TX 77004, United States
Attica Locke at the Houston Museum of African American Culture.
Attica Locke with Jennifer Weiner.
4807 Caroline St, Houston, TX 77004, United States
Attica Locke and John Guess Jr at the Houston Museum of African American Culture.
Attica Locke and Keija Parssinen.
Attica Locke at Serpent's Tail.
Attica Locke with her brothers.
Attica Locke with her father.
Attica Locke with her grandmother.
Attica Locke with her sister.
Attica Locke's father Gene Locke.
Attica Locke's sister Tembi Locke.
Attica Locke's brother Nicholas Locke.
Attica Locke's brother Doug Locke.
Attica Locke's mother and father.
Attica Locke's husband Karl Fenske.
(Jay Porter is hardly the lawyer he set out to be. His mos...)
Jay Porter is hardly the lawyer he set out to be. His most promising client is a low-rent call girl, and he runs his fledgling law practice out a dingy strip mall. But he’s long since made peace with his path to the American Dream, carefully tucking away his darkest sins: the guns, the FBI file, the trial that nearly destroyed him. Houston, Texas, 1981. It’s here that Jay believes he can make a fresh start. That is, until the night he impulsively saves a drowning woman’s life - and opens a Pandora’s Box. Her secrets put Jay in danger, ensnaring him in a murder investigation that could cost him his practice, his family, and even his life. But before he can get to the bottom of a tangled mystery that reaches into the upper echelons of Houston’s corporate powerbrokers, Jay must confront the demons of his past.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002BXH5TI/?tag=2022091-20
2009
(Caren Gray is the general manager of Belle Vie, a sprawli...)
Caren Gray is the general manager of Belle Vie, a sprawling antebellum plantation where the past and the present coexist uneasily. The estate’s owners have turned the place into an eerie tourist attraction complete with full-dress reenactments and carefully restored slave quarters. Outside the gates, an ambitious corporation has been busy snapping up land from struggling families who have grown sugar cane for generations, replacing local employees with illegal laborers. Tensions mount when the body of a female migrant worker is found in a shallow grave on the edge of the property, her throat cut clean. The list of suspects is long, but when the cops zero in on a person of interest, Caren has a feeling they’re chasing the wrong leads. Putting herself at risk, she unearths startling new facts about an old mystery - the long-ago disappearance of a former slave - that has unsettling ties to the modern-day crime.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007HBT7YK/?tag=2022091-20
2012
(Fifteen years after his career-defining case against Cole...)
Fifteen years after his career-defining case against Cole Oil, Jay Porter is broke and tired. That victory might have won the environmental lawyer fame, but thanks to a string of appeals, he hasn't seen a dime. His latest case - representing Pleasantville in the wake of a chemical fire - is dragging on, shaking his confidence and raising doubts about him within this upwardly mobile black community on Houston's north side. Though Jay still believes in doing what's right, he is done fighting other people's battles. Once he has his piece of the settlement, the single father is going to devote himself to what matters most - his children.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00M70LUBO/?tag=2022091-20
2015
(When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its o...)
When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules - a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about growing up black in the lone star state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home. When his allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he travels up Highway 59 to the small town of Lark, where two murders - a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman--have stirred up a hornet's nest of resentment. Darren must solve the crimes - and save himself in the process - before Lark's long-simmering racial fault lines erupt.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N4W6HX6/?tag=2022091-20
2017
(9-year-old Levi King knew he should have left for home so...)
9-year-old Levi King knew he should have left for home sooner; now he's alone in the darkness of vast Caddo Lake, in a boat whose motor just died. A sudden noise distracts him - and all goes dark. Darren Mathews is trying to emerge from another kind of darkness; after the events of his previous investigation, his marriage is in a precarious state of re-building, and his career and reputation lie in the hands of his mother, who's never exactly had his best interests at heart. Now she holds the key to his freedom, and she's not above a little maternal blackmail to press her advantage.
https://www.amazon.com/Heaven-Home-Highway-Mystery-Book-ebook/dp/B07MS7WJB2/?tag=2022091-20
2019
Attica Locke was born in 1974 in Houston, Texas, United States. Her parents were civil rights activists. She has four siblings.
Attica Locke graduated from Alief Hastings High School in Houston and then Northwestern University in Chicago.
Attica Locke is a writer who has been working in film and television for more than a decade. She was a Fellow at the Sundance Institute’s Feature Filmmaker’s Lab. Locke wrote movie scripts for Paramount, Warner Bros., Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, and Jerry Bruckheimer Films, as well as television pilots for HBO, Dreamworks and Silver Pictures. She was a writer and producer on Netflix’s When They See Us and also of the Hulu adaptation of Little Fires Everywhere. She worked on the adaptation of Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere as well. Attica Locke quit her job in 2005, took out a second mortgage, and gave herself a year to write a novel.
In 2009 she published her first novel Black Water Rising. The book is set during 1981 in oil-rich Houston, Texas, Locke’s hometown, and looks at big business corruption, a newly integrated longshoreman’s union, and the state of civil rights. Her follow-up, The Cutting Season, once again addresses important themes, though this time set in a rural backwater. In this historical thriller, the novelist examines the troubled racial past of the United States. Her third novel Pleasantville was published in 2015. In this sophisticated thriller, lawyer Jay Porter, the hero of Black Water Rising, returns to fight one last case, only to become embroiled once again in a dangerous game of shadowy politics and a witness to how far those in power are willing to go to win.
In her first three novels, Locke has explored cultural history since the days of slavery. Her fourth novel, Bluebird, Bluebird (2017), is about a black Texas Ranger, Darren Matthews, who finds himself in a small East Texas town investigating the murders of a local white woman and black lawyer from Chicago. It deals with race in the Obama and post-Obama era. All of Locke’s novels tackle themes of greed, class, and race with a strong emphasis on the past’s impact on the present. Her most recent novel is Heaven, My Home (2019). It is about race, migration, and forgiveness in Texas.
Attica Locke is a recipient of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, Harper Lee Prize, Edgar Allan Poe Award, CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award, and Anthony Award. She was also a nominee for Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, Dagger Award, Anthony Award, Macavity Award, NAACP Image Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
(9-year-old Levi King knew he should have left for home so...)
2019(When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its o...)
2017(Caren Gray is the general manager of Belle Vie, a sprawli...)
2012(Fifteen years after his career-defining case against Cole...)
2015(Jay Porter is hardly the lawyer he set out to be. His mos...)
2009Attica Locke admires a lot of current writers, including Megan Abbott, Kate Atkinson, Laura Lippman, Jesmyn Ward, and Tayari Jones. Jane Smiley’s 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel has influenced her writing. It was helpful to her when she wrote her first book. Her heroes are her father and her sister. She’s the biggest daddy’s girl on the planet. The only thing that would make her life better is knowing her child will always be safe.
Quotations:
"I have a profound love of where I'm from that I'm always trying to navigate with this other ambivalence about the parts of Texas that make me want to cry, that break my heart."
"You can't really go forward without understanding what was behind you."
"The trick in life is to hang out until the miracles come."
"I’m happiest with a book and a glass of wine and nowhere to be."
Attica Locke is a member of Writers Guild of America West.
Attica Locke loves movie thrillers. She watches every single episode of Dateline NBC and 48 Hours Mystery.
She loves Los Angeles because there is a profound atmosphere of permission.
Quotes from others about the person
"Attica Locke is a superb speaker and an insightful writer who asks penetrating questions about race in contemporary America and illuminates those questions through great storytelling. Each time we’ve featured Attica on our award-winning ALOUD literary series at the Los Angeles Public Library, she’s delivered. Her recent conversation with Walter Mosley was an example of her inquisitive mind and her informed and probing inquiry into how Americans deal with the paradoxes of our history and the possibilities of a multi-racial society." - Louise Steinman, Cultural Programs Director, Library Foundation of Los Angeles
"She is as compelling a speaker as she is a writer--articulate, captivating, and passionate." - Ann D. Farmer, Associate Professor Emerita of English, Whittier College and Bookfaire chair
"Attica is a fabulous speaker. Honest, thoughtful, witty, serious, smart and fully engaged and engaging. She shares her amazing talent with audiences across the country."- Olivia S. White, Executive Director, The Amistad Center for Art & Culture
"Attica Locke is an actress, performer, and entertainer as well as an award-winning writer. She keeps her listeners enthralled. Attica's love of writing, people and stories are evident in every talk she gives. Her charm and charisma pull the audience close to her as she shares her wit and wisdom." - Lynn Greeson Mitchell, Education Coordinator, Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence
"Attica Locke is smart, engaging, and incredibly inspirational. She goes the extra mile to connect to her audience." - Sherra Babcock, Vice President, Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education
Attica Locke is married to Karl Fenske. They have a daughter.
Gene practices in the public law area. He is the former City Attorney for the City of Houston. He is experienced in various state and local government subjects. Gene has handled major litigation involving these and other public law issues while advising and assisting governmental clients. Gene was the Harris County Precinct One Commissioner.
Tembi Locke has made a career starring in over fifty television shows and films. She has appeared and recurred on few long-running series. Tembi was named by legendary South African folksinger and activist Miriam Makeba.
Tembi is also an artist and an advocate. Her paintings are in private collections across the United States. In her personal life, she is passionate about issues related to sustainability, arts, education and raising awareness of family caregivers and community efforts to alleviate grief. A longtime homesteader, Tembi is also an enthusiastic gardener and advocate for urban gardening as an act of social justice.
Doug Locke is a singer and songwriter. His influences include Prince, Jimi Hendrix, Lenny Kravitz, George Michael, and Madonna. His work has been featured by The Huffington Post, AFROPUNK, Out Magazine, Idolator, GLAAD, Logo’s NewNowNext, Upworthy, PopMatters, Blurred Culture and many others. Locke’s debut EP “Blue Heart” sports a collection of Electric Pop, Funk Rock, and R&B Soul inspired songs tackling themes of love, sex, and empowerment written by Locke and producer Eric McNeely. In addition to playing shows all over Los Angeles (The Hotel Cafe, The Roxy, Boardner’s and more), Locke recently headlined Portland Pride.
