Sapphire (author)

Sapphire (born Ramona Lofton in 1950 in Fort Ord, California) is the pen name of a highly acclaimed African American author and performance poet. She attended City College of San Francisco and City College of New York. She obtained her master's degree at Brooklyn College.

She held various jobs before starting her writing career, working as an exotic dancer, a performance artist, a social worker, and a teacher of reading and writing. Her first novel Push brought her much praise and some controversy for its graphic account of a young black woman growing up in a cycle of incest and abuse. She lives and works in New York City.

Novels

 * Push (1996)

Poetry collections

 * Meditations on the Rainbow: Poetry (1987)
 * American Dreams (1994)