It’s the birthday of Terry McMillan (b. 1951), who is best known for her fantastically popular novels Waiting to Exhale (1992; film 1995) and How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1996; film 1998) and is credited with teaching the publishing world that there is a huge market of middle-class professional black female readers.

McMillan was born in Port Huron, Michigan, the oldest of five, and grew up near Detroit. McMillan’s mother had all five children by the age of 23, and her marriage to McMillan’s father ended when McMillan was 13. McMillan didn’t read much growing up because her family didn’t have any books except the Bible, but when she was 14 she started working in a library and discovered reading. She first read and loved works by Hawthorne, Thoreau, Thomas Mann, and the like, and assumed that the world of literature was white. Then she discovered James Baldwin.

McMillan moved to California and took a lit class at Los Angeles City College, where she studied more black writers: Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Ann Petry. Then she moved north and studied journalism at UC Berkeley (1979); she published her first short story, “The End,” in 1976, and her first novel, Mama, in 1987, which she promoted herself by sending thousands of letters to bookstores and organizations—especially black organizations—urging them to buy her book. That first book sold out its first printing of 5,000 copies. (That’s more copies than most novels sell in their entire lifetimes.) McMillan’s third book, Waiting to Exhale, has sold well over 500,000 copies and landed her a $6 million contract for novel #4, How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1996). Stella was based on McMillan’s own story of falling in love with a much younger Jamaican man. (McMillan was married to the guy for about seven years before learning he was gay and getting a divorce. She likes him fine now.)

McMillan has one son, a graduate of Stanford University, and when asked which writers she would most love to ask to a dinner party, McMillan listed David Foster Wallace, Zora Neale Hurston, and Toni Morrison. (Okay, that would be mind-blowing. What would you serve? Discuss.) Her most recent novel is I Almost Forgot about You (2016).

Have a fine Friday in spite of the persistently #$(*&@# gloomy weather and stay scrupulously honest to the data.