Veronica Chambers

Chambers attended Simon's Rock College of Bard, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where she received a B.A. in Literary Studies, summa cum laude.  She often writes about her Afro-Latina heritage. In 1997, she received critical acclaim for her memoir, Mama’s Girl, which the New Yorker said was, “a troubling testament to grit and mother love … one of the finest and most evenhanded in the genre in recent years.”

Chambers has taught writing at Stanford University, Bowdoin College, Bard College at Simon's Rock, and the Rutgers University Summer Program, among other colleges, universities, and writing workshops. She has been a fellow at Columbia University's Freedom Forum, the Japan Society Media Fellows Program in New York and Tokyo, Stanford University's John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship program, the National Endowment of the Arts, the British-American Project in Newcastle upon Tyne England, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Camargo Foundation, in Cassis, France, and Princeton University's Hodder Fellowship program.  Chambers has also been a Lecturer for the Young Women's Writing Program at Smith College and for the Environmental Communication Program at Stanford University.

Chambers has written more than 20 works of fiction, non-fiction, and children's literature and co-authored four New York Times bestsellers. Her essays have appeared in anthologies including The Bitch in the House and The Body, as well as periodicals as diverse as The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Parade and O, The Oprah Magazine.

After release of the bestselling Yes Chef, which she co-authored with Marcus Samuelsson, New York Times critic Dwight Garner called Chambers and Yes Chef “one of the great culinary stories of our time.”[1] President Bill Clinton said, “In this memoir, Marcus Samuelsson tells a story that reaches past racial and national divides to the foundation of family, hope and downright good food.”  In 2015, Chambers and Samuelsson published a young adult version of Yes, Chef, called Make it Messy, which Barnes & Noble named one of its best teen books of the year.

In 2014, Chambers co-wrote the New York Times bestseller Everybody’s Got Something with journalist, Robin Roberts. In May 2016, Random House published 32 Yolks, the memoir Chambers co-authored with celebrated chef Eric Ripert. Chambers’s other memoir collaborations include Wake Up Happy with morning TV host and NFL Hall of Famer Michael Strahan and Emperor of Sound with multi-platinum producer Timbaland.

In 2018, she joined the Archival Storytelling Team at The New York Times, where she edits Past Tense, a new initiative devoted to articles based on photographs from the newspaper's six million-photo archive.

As a Director of Brand Development at Hearst Corporation, Chambers and an executive team led the relaunch of Good Housekeeping and Goodhousekeeping.com. Chambers also developed and launched the magazine Glam Latina for Condé Nast and Women's Day Latina for the Hearst Company.

Chambers has written more than a dozen books for children and received critical acclaim for Celia Cruz, Queen of Salsa, the body confidence young adult novel Plus, and her most recent young adult novel The Go-Between, about teens, race, culture, and class in Los Angeles.[2]

In 2014, Veronica Chambers and her husband, Jason, established the Loud Emily scholarship, in honor of Emily Fisher, Veronica's mentor in philanthropy.  The Loud Emily scholarship provides full tuition for two girls to the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls in New York.  The recipients are chosen based on their submissions of essays and short creative videos, explaining how and why they use their voices and their music to speak for the causes they believe in.

A graduate of Bard College at Simon's Rock, Chambers, along with her husband, has endowed three music and literature scholarships at the college. For the past 10 years, she has served on the Board of Overseers of Bard College at Simon's Rock, in roles including the chairmanship of the Academic Affairs Committee.

This is a list of works by Veronica Chambers.[3]

• Between Harlem and Heaven: Afro-Asian-American Cookbook (Flatiron/Macmillan, 2018)
• The Meaning of Michelle: 16 Writers on Our Iconic First Lady and How Her Journey Inspires Our Own, Editor (St. Martin's Press, 2017)
• The Go-Between Young Adult novel (Delacorte/Random House, 2017)
• 32 Yolks (co-written with Eric Ripert) (Random House, 2016)
• Wake Up Happy (co-written with Michael Strahan) (37 Ink, 2015)                  
• Everybody’s Got Something (co-written with Robin Roberts) Grand Central Publishing, 2014)              
• Yes Chef (co-written with Marcus Samuelsson) (Random House, 2012)          
• Kickboxing Geishas: How Modern Japanese Women Are Changing Their Nation (Free Press, 2007)
• The Joy of Doing Things Badly: A Girls’ Guide to Love, Life and Foolish Bravery (Doubleday, 2006)
• Miss Black America (Doubleday, 2005)
• Celia Cruz, Queen of Salsa (Dial, 2005)
• Having It All? Black Women and Success (Doubleday, 2003)
• Double Dutch: Jump Rope, Rhyme and Sisterhood (Hyperion, 2002)
• Quinceañera Means Sweet Fifteen (Hyperion, 2001)
• Marisol & Magdalena (Hyperion, 1998)
• The Harlem Renaissance (Chelsea House, 1998)
• Amistad Rising (Harcourt Brace, 1998)
• Mama's Girl (Riverhead, 1996)

• Poetic Justice: Filmmaking South Central Style (Dell, 1992)   

• Quotations related to Veronica Chambers at Wikiquote