Recently, when a neighbor’s son started medical school, he told me he would have to learn 15,000 new words in the next four years. What I found most interesting was that as a college graduate, his vocabulary already consisted of approximately 15,000 words. Although I don’t have a precise number of new terms, skills or […]

Bill Clinton Loves Being Connected to Harlem By maintaining a satellite office in the Adam Clayton Powell Building on 125th St, Bill remains faithful to Harlem. Some residents feel he abandoned the community in 2011, when he moved his main office downtown to the city’s business district. It’s unfortunate, but understandable that he, like most […]

In July, ‘Hamilton,’ the hugely popular Off-Broadway hip hop musical about Alexander Hamilton will move to Broadway. Now, there’s also ‘Clinton: The Musical,’ a comedy that parodies President Bill Clinton’s highs and lows. Besides Hillary running for president, why this sudden interest in an impeached president who’s been out of office fifteen years, and a […]

Memoir 101 by Terry Baker Mulligan “Write what you know” sounds like wise advice, but if writers didn’t experiment and break new ground, literature might have died under the weight of its own tedium. Today we know that part of the joy in writing is discovery: interviewing subjects, digging through library stacks, visiting neighborhoods or even […]

So, my hubby and harshest writing critic, who mostly reads non-fiction, condescended to finally start reading my new novel, Afterlife in Harlem. He called me from work to say, “You left this morning before I could tell you that your prologue is really good, especially the dialogue. I’m surprised that it held my interest; a […]

Though they lived hundreds of years apart, Bill Clinton and Alexander Hamilton, two white men, were important pioneers in the Harlem community.

kYmberly Keeton, librarian at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, wrote this review of Afterlife in Harlem, which you can read here:  

Kirkus Reviews Afterlife in Harlem AFTERLIFE IN HARLEM Mulligan, Terry Baker October 1, 2014 The shade of Alexander Hamilton helps Bill Clinton and a homeless Harlem waif bond in this cheerfully haphazard fantasia. With President Hillary Clinton settled in the White House circa 2016, first gentleman Bill Clinton is feeling somewhat emasculated—hemmed in by the […]

The fun began on Friday night at a cocktail party; at 1o a.m. on Saturday morning, it was early and still chilly for our outdoor panel discussion on the memoir. Despite the nippy weather, we had a great moderator in Mary Ellen Howard (on left), who asked probing questions. The audience was mixed in age […]

Today we commemorate the thousands of people who died in the 9/11 attacks. Also of note, 226 years ago today, on September 11, 1789 President George Washington appointed Alexander Hamilton as the first United States Secretary of the Treasury. With so many current concerns, why should we care about something that happened 226 years ago […]