Why Denene Millner is the Most Important Voice in Publishing Right Now
Denene Millner discusses founding Denene Millner Books at Simon & Schuster and other topics of discussion
BIG CED sits down with Denene Millner — six-time New York Times bestselling author, journalist, and the only Black woman with her own children’s book imprint at a major American publishing house — for a wide-ranging conversation on her career, craft, and the fight to keep Black storytelling authentic in the age of AI.
From her start as a political reporter at the New York Daily News (covering the Dinkins and Giuliani administrations) to her transition into entertainment journalism, Millner shares the story of leaving the Daily News after an editor dismissed Donnie Hathaway’s “A Song for You” in her Jay-Z interview — a moment that pushed her to Honey Magazine. She explains how a spoof cover mocking The Rules accidentally landed her a book deal by 3 PM that same day, launching a career that now spans 34 books, including celebrity memoirs for Steve Harvey, Taraji P. Henson, Charlie Wilson, and Jessye Norman.
Millner discusses founding Denene Millner Books at Simon & Schuster after discovering that of roughly 3,000 children’s books published in 2016, only about 90 featured Black characters — and only around 40 were written or illustrated by Black people. Her imprint focuses on Black children’s everyday humanity, not just slavery, civil rights, or “Black firsts.” She highlights upcoming titles like Here Comes the Band (about HBCU marching band culture) and Impossible Moon (constellations through an African-American lens).
The conversation takes a personal turn when Milner reveals how researching her novel One Blood — about three women connected through adoption — led her to discover she was a “Baby Scoop Era” baby herself, and her journalistic skills helped her find her own birth mother within days.
On AI, Millner is unflinching: she’s one of the writers suing Anthropic (10 of her 34 books were scraped to train its models), calls out the double standard where white writers are praised for using AI while Black writers lose contracts over AI-detection false positives, and defends ghostwriting as a genuine art form machines can’t replicate. She closes with advice for BIG CED on ego, editing, and why “true writing comes in the drafts.”
Topics Discussed
- Early journalism career — political reporting at the Associated Press and NY Daily News, covering Dinkins/Giuliani
- Leaving the Daily News — the Donnie Hathaway incident and disrespect for Black culture in newsrooms
- Honey Magazine & Vanguard Media — Black media excellence and legacy
- Her first book deal — the “Rules for the Sisters” cover story fluke
- Celebrity memoirs — Steve Harvey, Taraji P. Henson, Charlie Wilson, Jessye Norman (and the Jessye Norman ego lesson)
- Denene Milner Books at Simon & Schuster — the statistics gap in children’s publishing and why she’s the only one with an imprint
- HBCU band culture — Here Comes the Band, Battle of the Bands, and both hosts’ HBCU regrets
- The craft of writing — voice, research, “bleeding on the page,” and editing as the real work (the Karen Good lesson)
- AI in publishing — the Anthropic lawsuit, scraped books, AI-detector false accusations, and the racial double standard
- One Blood — the novel about three women, and discovering her own Baby Scoop Era adoption and birth mother
- Upcoming work — This Is a Beautiful Life, a book of essays on freedom, joy, and single life after divorce
- The writing life & ego — advice to BIG CED on impostor syndrome, playing piano by ear, and staying true to your voice
Why Denene Millner is the Most Important Voice in Publishing Right Now