Brooklyn-born author, Crystal Lacey Winslow, began writing creatively at an early age.At the fledgling age of eight, beating out the entire school as her competition, she won her first journalist contest. It was at that very moment she realized she had a gift for writing and continued honing her craft writing poetry/prose. She soon decided she wanted to do something “more adult†so at the age of fourteen, she wrote her very first unpublished novel.Crystal Lacey Winslow, a very diverse and multi-talented individual, has lived in various cities. She has moved from Virginia, to Maryland, then to Washington, D.C. before returning to her native New York City. Through the course of her living experiences and other travels, she has enjoyed all aspects of her surroundings -- the serenity of the suburbs, where she learned to swim, play the flute, archery and horseback riding; to the pulse of the innercity where she delighted in playing scully, hop-scotch, tag and touch football. Having encountered many colorful people along the way, she draws on both her human and environmental experiences that have become the inspirations for her writings. The result is a unique and melodramatic storytelling technique, which is evident in her deeply personal poetry book, Up Close & Personal, her critically acclaimed debut-novel, Life, Love & Loneliness, and her recent second Essence bestselling novel, The Criss Cross.Crystal Lacey Winslow earned her baccalaureate degree in Legal Assistant Studies and worked for one of the largest law firms in the country. She soon realized her passion for creative writing was undying and therefore published Melodrama, a poetry chapbook in 2000. Soon after in 2001, Ms. Winslow founded her own publishing company, Melodrama Publishing, and opened her first bookstore, Melodrama Books & Things in 2003 in Far Rockaway, NY – the first bookstore in that neighborhood in over 30 years.Ms. Winslow is as ambitious and driven as the characters of whom she so vividly writes and is determined to carve out a place for herself in the literary world. Lacey is currently one of four authors in the Essence best-selling Simon & Schuster anthology, Four Degrees of Heat and Kiss The Year Goodbye. Her latest release, Sex, Sin & Brooklyn dropped, October 31, 2006. She will also continue to publish the works of other aspiring African-American authors.Crystal Lacey Winslow is the author of Life, Love & Loneliness and The Criss Cross and co-author of Four Degrees of Heat and Kiss the Year Goodbye. She has been featured on BET Nightly News, Vibe Magazine, Black Enterprise, The Source, Upscale Magazine, Black Hairstyles, The Daily News, and Black Issue Review. She’s been on various radio shows such as The Wendy Williams Experience and 98.7 Kiss Wakeup Club.
