Teri Woods (born March 8, 1968) is an American novelist from

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, and a successful, self-published pioneer of the

urban fiction With more than half the world's population living in cities, urban fiction has become a truly global field. Recent comprehensive studies of urban fiction showcase the worldwide reach of the genre and include ''Writing Beirut: Mappings of the Ci ...

genre. Woods finished writing her first novel, ''True to the Game'', in 1992 while working at a law firm in Philadelphia. She spent six years submitting the work to numerous publishers, all of which rejected her. In 1998, Woods had copies of the book printed herself and began to hand-sell the novel to booksellers in and around the Philadelphia area and, eventually, across the United States, eventually starting Teri Woods Publishing, a self-publishing house to put out her own work and that of others, principally in the

genre, aimed at a demographic largely ignored by major publishers. Woods's breakout success helped her negotiate a multimillion-dollar contract with Hachette Book Group USA to re-release her previously published novels. In 2015, it was announced that ''True to the Game'' was being produced into a film of the same name. Woods is the sister of

Dexter Wansel Dexter Gilman Wansel (born August 22, 1950) is an American R&B/jazz fusion singer, arranger, musician, composer, conductor, synthesist and A&R director. Early life Dexter Wansel began as an errand boy backstage at the Uptown Theater in Philade ...

, American keyboardist.

External links

Teri Woods PublishingTeri Woods, Author Profile on AALBC

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Woods, Teri 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American novelists African-American novelists Writers from Philadelphia American women novelists 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women writers Living people Novelists from Pennsylvania 1968 births 20th-century African-American women 21st-century African-American women writers 21st-century African-American writers