DAWN TURNER

Author of
Majestic Hills (Simon & Schuster, 2026)
Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood (Simon and Schuster, 2021)
An Eighth of August (Crown/RandomHouse, 2000)
Only Twice I’ve Wished for Heaven (Crown/RandomHouse, 1997)

Dawn Turner’s most recent book, Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood was called “unmissable” by Vogue and “Poignant and nuanced” by Ms. Magazine. Three Girls from Bronzeville was named a Notable book of 2021 by The New York Times Book Review, and a Best Book of 2021 by The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, Buzzfeed, The Library Journal, Real Simple, and Hudson Booksellers, among others. Dawn is a former columnist for the Chicago Tribune and has twice served as a juror for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary. She has written commentary for The Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, CBS Sunday Morning News show, NPR’s Morning Edition show, the Chicago Tonight show, and elsewhere. She has held fellowships at Harvard University and the University of Chicago, and in 2018 established the Dawn M. Turner and Kim D. Turner Endowed Scholarship in Media at her alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Twitter / Instagram / Facebook / Represented by Ayesha Pande

Majestic Hills (Simon & Schuster, 2026)

A Black couple leaves their downtown Chicago condo for a new suburban subdivision, only to find themselves at the center of a maelstrom in this gripping page-turner from the award-winning author of Three Girls from Bronzeville.

Tired of the daily drama in his emergency room, Dr. Langdon Blaque is in search of a place where he can leave the world behind. He loves his job and has no delusions about the suburbs being perfect, but he wants peace and quiet. His wife Josephine, a lawyer, grew up listening to her father’s stories about the Jim Crow South, and sundown towns. She prefers the city. Still, she agrees to move with the caveat that they stay for a year and reassess.

The tight-knit, predominantly white group of neighbors in Majestic Hills initially welcomes them with open arms. But beneath the veneer of privileged harmony, tensions simmer. When a horrifying crime rocks the community, the illusion of safety is shattered, and Josephine and Langdon find themselves at the heart of a brewing storm that pits neighbor against neighbor, exposes deeply ingrained prejudices, and threatens to implode into violence.

As their experiment in suburban living ticks toward the one-year mark, the Blaques are pushed to a breaking point. Can they find a way to make a home in Majestic Hills? Or has the move put their future, their marriage, and even their safety in jeopardy?

Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood (Simon & Schuster, 2021)

Notable Book of 2021, New York Times Book Review
Best Book of 2021, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Buzzfeed, The Library Journal, Real Simple, and Hudson Booksellers

A story of three girls who start out in virtually the same place and wind up taking three dramatically different paths.

An Eighth of August (Crown/RandomHouse, 2000)

The story of a Black family that celebrates Kentucky’s equivalent to Juneteenth.

Only Twice I’ve Wished for Heaven (Crown/RandomHouse, 1997)

In 1975, Tempestt Saville, 11, and her family are chosen by lottery to “move on up” to Lakeland: one square mile of sparkling apartment towers where the Black elite live sheltered from the ghetto by a ten-foot-tall, ivy-covered wrought-iron fence. Tempestt’s curiosity soon leads her down a dangerous path, however, and after witnessing the death of a friend, she sets into motion a chain of events that will send 35th Street up in flames.