NITA Wiggins knew when she was eight years old that she wanted to be a reporter covering the Dallas Cowboys. Her interest in sports originated from spending time with her father, who coached her younger brother's basketball and baseball teams in Augusta, Georgia, where she grew up in the 1970s and '80s; on Sundays during football season she would sit with her father and watch games on TV for hours. After graduating from Augusta College with a degree in communications in 1986, Wiggins went on to work as a television reporter at several stations before getting her dream job in 1999 at KDFW TV-Fox 4 in Dallas, interviewing high-profile figures such as Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Rosa Parks, and President Jimmy Carter. Wiggins shared a regional Emmy for Special Events Coverage in 2001 for her work on Fox 4's Cotton Bowl pregame show. After more than twenty years of on-air reporting, however, she grew disillusioned with the business and in 2009 moved to Paris, where she teaches journalism at the École supérieure de journalisme de Paris and other schools and regularly appears on French television.
I spoke with Wiggins about her book, Civil Rights Baby: My Story of Race, Sports, and Breaking Barriers in American Journalism, which was initially published by Casa Express Editions in 2019, and why she chose to self-publish the revised edition, which she released in 2021. For perspectives on the challenges of self-publishing, I turned to Sha-Shana Crichton, a literary agent in Washington, D.C., and Dawn Michelle Hardy, owner of the Literary Lobbyist, a publicity firm and literary agency in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The Author's Approach
This story is from the September - October 2022 edition of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the September - October 2022 edition of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Literary MagNet
When Greg Marshall began writing the essays that would become his memoir, Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew From It (Abrams Press, June 2023), he wanted to explore growing up in Utah and what he calls \"the oddball occurrences in my oddball family.\" He says, \"I wanted to call the book Long-Term Side Effects of Accutane and pitch it as Six Feet Under meets The Wonder Years.\" But in 2014 he discovered his diagnosis of cerebral palsy, information his family had withheld from him for nearly thirty years, telling him he had \"tight tendons\" in his leg. This revelation shifted the focus of the project, which became an \"investigation into selfhood, uncovering the untold story of my body,\" says Marshall. Irreverent and playful, Leg reckons with disability, illness, queerness, and the process of understanding our families and ourselves.
THE MEUSEUM OF HUMAN HISTORY
READING The Museum of Human History felt like listening to a great harmonic hum. After I finished it I found the hum lingering in my ears. Its echo continued for days.
The Sea Elephants
SHASTRI Akella's poised, elegant debut, The Sea Elephants, is a bildungsroman of a young man who joins a street theater group in India after fleeing his father's violent disapproval, the death of his twin sisters, and his mother's unfathomable grief.
The History of a Difficult Child
MIHRET Sibhat's debut novel begins with God dumping rain on a small Ethiopian town as though. He were mad at somebody.
The Sorrows of Others
AS I read each story in Ada Zhang’s brilliant collection, The Sorrows of Others, within the first few paragraphs— sometimes the first few sentences— I felt I understood the characters intimately and profoundly, such that every choice they made, no matter how radical, ill-advised, or baffling to those around them, seemed inevitable and true to me.
We Are a Haunting
TYRIEK White’s debut novel, We Are a Haunting, strikes me as both a love letter to New York City and a kind of elegy.
RADICAL ATTENTION
IN HER LATEST BOOK, THE LIGHT ROOM: ON ART AND CARE, PUBLISHED BY RIVERHEAD BOOKS IN JULY, KATE ZAMBRENO CELEBRATES THE ETHICAL WORK OF CAREGIVING, THE SMALL JOYS OF ORDINARY LIFE, AND AN ENGAGEMENT WITH THE NATURAL WORLD WITHIN HUMAN SPACES.
The Fine Print
HOW TO READ YOUR BOOK CONTRACT
First
GINA CHUNG'S SEA CHANGE
Blooming how she must
WITH ROOTS IN NATURE WRITING, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, POETRY, AND PHOTOGRAPHY, CAMILLE T. DUNGY'S NEW BOOK, SOIL: THE STORY OF A BLACK MOTHER'S GARDEN, DELVES INTO THE PERSONAL AND POLITICAL ACT OF CULTIVATING AND DIVERSIFYING A GARDEN OF HERBS, VEGETABLES, FLOWERS, AND OTHER PLANTS IN THE PREDOMINANTLY WHITE COMMUNITY OF FORT COLLINS, COLORADO.
