Grace Edwards was director of The Harlem Writers Guild which is dedicated to presenting the experiences of people of the African Diaspora through the written word. Ms. Edwards, who was the secretary of The Harlem Writers Guild, stepped up to the role of director upon the death of Bill Banks, longtime leader of The Guild. Grace was born as Grace Fredrica Smith on January 3, 1933, in Harlem Hospital, New York to William Smith, a laborer for the depression-era works progress administration, and Fredrica Smith, a homemaker. She was educated at the City College of New York. She earned her master’s degree in creative writing from the City University of New York. Grace F. Edwards was a beacon of hope, brilliance, and dedication within the New York literary scene. In 1992, Ms. Edwards became the first African American author signed to Doubleday. She is the author of seven books, In the Shadow of the Peacock, If I Should Die, A Toast Before Dying, No Time to Die, Do or Die, The Viaduct, and The Blind Alley. She is the 1999 winner of the Fiction Honor Book award from the Black Caucus of the American Literary Association. She reviewed books for the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Ms. Edwards has served as a professor of Creative Writing at Hofstra University, Marymount Manhattan College, the College of New Rochelle, and Hunter College. She served in the dual roles of director and secretary of The Guild for over a decade. Ms. Edwards has dedicated much of her life to ensuring that the guild thrives, serving as writing instructor, advisor, motivator, and mentor to the collective of passionate writers while keeping up with the student curriculum as a college professor and meeting her own publishing deadlines. Additionally, Grace Edwards often extended herself to such community programs as the 92nd Street Y, the once-popular Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center, and other networks to facilitate affordably priced writing workshops for otherwise economically disenfranchised writers in the community. In February 2020, she died at the age of 87.

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