From the time she was a little girl, Tina McElroy Ansa wanted to tell stories, like the ones she had heard growing up in Macon and central Georgia. And she did — she wrote novels and essays, won awards, created conferences, launched a publishing company and gathered fans and friends.
Her grandfather’s tales, her mother’s advice, strangers’ stories shared in her father’s liquor store — all informed her work chronicling the lives of modern Black women, with a focus on family and appearances of apparitions.
“She was in the wave of women in the 1980s and ‘90s writing African American literature,” says veteran journalist Wanda Lloyd. Her friendship with McElroy Ansa began as freshman roommates at Spelman College, developed as they moved into careers and evolved into collaborations on projects and programs, including a podcast, “Two Old Chicks Who Know Sh*t.”
McElroy Ansa was born in Macon in 1949 to Walter J. and Nellie McElroy, the youngest of their five children. Her unexpected death Sept. 10. at age 74 in her St. Simons Island home shocked friends and family. They never heard her talk of medications or doctor visits. If she were sick, no one knew. And she wasn’t slowing down.
She was preparing for an October film festival celebrating the 100th birthday of the historic Harrington School, the first school for African American children on St. Simons. She was also working on a project about Zora Neale Hurston.
Credit: Stephen B. Morton for The Atlanta Journal Constitution
Credit: Stephen B. Morton for The Atlanta Journal Constitution
McElroy Ansa and Lloyd graduated from college in 1971 as English majors. McElroy Ansa became the first African American woman on the editorial side of The Atlanta Constitution, where she worked as a copy editor and as a feature writer for 10 years before moving to the Charlotte Observer as an editor. In 1979, she married cinematographer Jonée Ansa.
The couple later moved to the Georgia coast. When they were crossing the causeway to St. Simons, McElroy Ansa said later she had heard a voice telling her, “This is your home.” Jonée told her he had heard the same voice.
Theirs was a well-known love story, Lloyd says, “and Jonée was the kind of husband who made it possible for her to write, by being a video photographer and still photographer. At some point he was a police officer — he was always working.”
McElroy Ansa’s first novel, “Baby of the Family,” was named a New York Times Notable Book of 1989. In addition to the ancestors, it reflects her Roman Catholic upbringing. “Baby of the Family” sold 175,000 copies, reaching a market of readers who wanted stories about contemporary, middle-class African American women. It was later named one of the Top 25 Books Every Georgian Should Read by the Georgia Center for the Book.
“What I found so fascinating about her work was her ability to articulate the connection between Black people on earth and the ancestors, and how they relied on each other,” says Bernice L. McFadden, an assistant professor of creative writing at Tulane University and the author of “Sugar.” “There aren’t many people in my circle who believe in ancestor veneration. She was a gift.”
In 2004, McElroy Ansa and Lloyd created the Sea Island Writers Retreat, which moved from Sapelo Island to Spelman College, Savannah State University, Georgia College & State University, the University of Georgia, and Bethune-Cookman College in Florida. The next year, she received the 2005 Stanley W. Lindberg Award for her contributions to Georgia Literature.
Librarian and writer Michele Nicole Johnson, a former journalist with the Florida Times-Union, met McElroy Ansa as the keynote speaker at the meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists in Jacksonville. The two became and remained friends. “She had such a vibrant personality, she would get to know people and then encourage them to do whatever it was they wanted to do,” Johnson said. “She was always lifting up young women.”
In 2008, dismayed at the lukewarm reception her subsequent novels were receiving, McElroy Ansa founded DownSouth Press to showcase Black literature. She launched the business at the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, where Lloyd was the editor of the Montgomery Advertiser.
In addition to McElroy Ansa’s novel “Taking After Mudear,” DownSouth Press published “Meeting at the Table: African American Women Write on Race, Culture and Community.” Featuring essays from 16 participants, the book was created during the pandemic and has an introduction by McElroy Ansa.
Coediting the book with Lloyd “really helped bring Tina out again after Jonée had died in 2020,” said St. Simons resident Emily Ellison, who is also a member of St. Simons writing community. “And then she got involved with the Harrington School and the community.”
Tina McElroy Ansa is survived by her sister, and several nieces and nephews. Plans for a memorial service will be announced later.
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