Mulligan attended both public and private schools while growing up in New York, graduating high school from the famous “progressive powerhouse,” the New Lincoln School in Harlem. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in English from Wagner College in Staten Island, New York, and she completed her formal education at the City College of New York, earning a Master of Arts degree in English.
The idea for Terry Baker Mulligan’s novel, “Afterlife in Harlem,” was conceived in 2001 while standing in front of Alexander Hamilton’s Harlem home. 2001 was also the year President Bill Clinton opened his Harlem office. Beginning with their births to single mothers of modest means, Mulligan began to realize how much Clinton and Hamilton had in common.
Both men were also hampered by similar and damaging sexual scandals.
Mulligan writes about her frequent visits to the Apollo Theater in its heyday as a showcase for the great stars of Jazz, Soul, Gospel, Rhythm & Blues and early Rock ‘n Roll. Mulligan’s mother Olivia Hodges Jackson worked as a secretary in the offices of the Harlem-based New York Amsterdam News, and later for the administration at the City College of New New York
Her father, the Philadelphia-born Roy Baker, was a Cotton Club dancer and an entertainer with Cab Calloway’s troupe during the Harlem Renaissance era. Although never married to her mother, Baker took some responsibility for Terry’s upbringing, with colorful weekend adventures along Seventh Avenue defining his relationship with young Terry.
After settling in Saint Louis, Mulligan studied fiction and non-fiction writing at Washington University’s Summer Writers Institute and the Iowa Summer Writing Festival.
In 2000, her article “Sugar Hill” appeared in Labor History. She recently left her teaching duties at Saint Louis Community College to devote her full time to writing. She also volunteers with several non-profit organizations that seek to improve education for youth in underserved schools.
Mulligan is the mother of two grown sons.
Terry Baker Mulligan has appeared at major cultural venues in Saint Louis and New York City to speak and read from her 2012 memoir. The cover of "Sugar Hill" was included on the front of Publishers Weekly in March 2012, featuring titles from the Independent Book Publishers Association.
She is a member of the Harlem Arts Alliance, the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), and a former secretary of the Saint Louis Publishers Association.
