Woods, Teri

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Teri Woods

1968—

Novelist, publisher

Novelist and publisher Teri Woods is one of the pioneers of urban fiction, also known as street lit, a contemporary fiction genre that takes inspiration and setting from the predominantly black culture in America's cities. Woods's novels portray the struggles of inner-city residents seeking to escape poverty through crime, and she has found a growing audience for her novels among those raised and living in the environment she depicts. Woods self-published her first novel in 1999 and became a publishing industry entrepreneur, with an independent publishing company and several of her books in transition to film.

Woods was born in 1968 in Media, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. Woods, whose father was African-American and mother was a blend of Irish and Indian, spent most of her young life in West Philadelphia, where she witnessed firsthand the criminal element of urban culture. Woods had a turbulent youth and left home at an early age, finding herself deep in a world of crime and violence. In an interview in Savoy in 2003, Woods described herself as a "troubled teen in West Philadelphia surrounded by abandoned buildings, and everything I saw was this fast lifestyle."

Woods gave birth to a daughter, Jessica, at a time when she was unemployed and without financial prospects, and she relied on her mother for financial and emotional support. "My mom is the reason for my success and all that I am," Woods said of her mother in an interview in Ebony in 2005. "She is my hero." Driven by the need to care for her child and build a better family environment, Woods found a job as a paralegal secretary and cleaned offices at night to make ends meet.

Sold First Novel on Street Corners

Despite a hectic schedule, Woods began taking some of the experiences she had in her youth and weaving them into an urban fable. After six years of writing, Woods had finished her first novel, True to the Game. The story follows cartel member Quadir as he navigates the dangerous drug business and eventually tries to extricate himself from the industry, while his girlfriend Gena tries to hold on to love in hopes of permanently escaping the ghetto. Woods finished the book in 1994, copyrighted it, and began shopping her manuscript around to publishers.

According to Woods, more than twenty publishers rejected the manuscript. She believed that the unusual subject matter of her books caused publishing companies to be wary of getting involved in the project. "I think it's hard for a publishing house to grasp the diversity of black people in a book and understand it without a concept," Woods told Savoy.

Woods gave up on publishing the book until 1997, when a friend read it and convinced her to try again to find a publisher. In King, Woods told Chloé A. Hilliard that the project turned around unexpectedly after she met a man named Brian Murray at a traffic stop and ended up giving him a copy of the novel. Murray was so interested in the book that he donated $3,000 to Woods to help her begin producing it independently.

Woods formed her own company, Meow Meow Productions, and with the help of friends produced a batch of 500 books, which she bound herself. Woods took copies of her novel to local beauty shops and sold them on the street from the trunk of her car. "Selling my book on the streets represents the hustle, and what I was prepared to do to in order to have my story read," Woods told a reporter in a 2002 interview in the New York Beacon. She also took copies of her book to Harlem, New York, and sold them on the sidewalk across the street from Harlem's famous Apollo Theater.

Started Her Own Publishing Company

Woods sold all of her copies of the first edition of True to the Game, and then started on a second printing. In interviews Woods has credited the enthusiasm of friends and customers, who helped her sell the book on the streets, with keeping her going through the difficult beginning. "This is the power of the street that's not recognized," Woods said in Savoy. "I haven't forgotten any of those people. I always try to pay my dues." Woods found that there was an enthusiastic audience for the type of story she was telling, many of whom had lived through experiences similar to the difficulties faced by her characters. "It's thanks to the brothers in jail and the ones hustling on the streets that True to the Game caught on like it did," Woods told Alexandra Phanor in Source in 2003. "Who else could relate to what I was writing about?"

In 1999 the record label Cash Money Millionaires, known for its production of hip-hop and R&B artists, announced that they were negotiating with Woods to make True to the Game into a film. A number of media outlets reported that the deal was signed for more than $1 million. However, Woods's deal with Cash Money was eventually scrapped, and the movie was sidelined. Woods said in interviews that she was disappointed but was still interested in pursuing film projects in the future.

Driven by the underground success of her first novel, Woods began working on a follow-up book and used some of her funds to found Teri Woods Publishing, an imprint company that would publish not only her subsequent works but also become a publishing house for a number of authors in the emerging genre of urban fiction. When her success became apparent, many of the publishing companies that had rejected Woods's original manuscript contacted her offering to publish her work. "I used to be really angry that they even had the audacity to contact me," Woods said in Savoy. She decided to remain independent, unwilling to sell her work to a publishing company that might try to change it for political reasons. "I have the editorial control to tell the truth without losing the essence of black people."

Found Niche Publishing Urban, Prison Novels

While she was working on her second book, Woods began seeking out other authors to publish with her company. From the start she courted clients that some publishers preferred to avoid, including those serving terms in prison. The first book released by Teri Woods Publishing was B-More Careful (2001), a book by prison inmate Shannon Holmes, which sold more than 20,000 copies in its first week of print and was praised by critics for its forthright and brutal portrayal of violence in the urban jungle. Woods's company then published the work of another convicted felon, Kwame Teague, whose book The Adventures of Ghetto Sam (2003) was the second major success for Woods's publishing group.

As her company grew, Woods increasingly spent time managing other artists and brokering deals with booksellers. However, she did not let the schedule prevent her from writing and continuing to produce new works at a pace few authors could match. Woods followed True to the Game with a sequel, True to the Game II, and also produced another series, Dutch, Dutch II, and Dutch III, which tells the story of New Jersey criminal Bernard "Dutch" James Jr. and his family, friends, and competitors vying for control in the heroin industry against a variety of competitors and the law. Part adventure, part family story, the Dutch series won further praise for Woods and her unique variety of urban stories.

At a Glance …

Born March 8, 1968, in Media, PA; children: Jessica, Lucas.

Career: Novelist, 1998—; publisher, Meow Meow Productions, 1998-2000; publisher, Teri Woods Publishing, 2000—.

Addresses: Office—Teri Woods Publishing, PO Box 20069, New York, NY 10001.

As Woods and her fellow writers began building the urban lit genre into a respected subset of action fiction, Woods became an influential force in the publishing industry. In interviews Woods gave credit to the urban writers who preceded her, but remained proud of her struggle and the empire she built from selling books out of the trunk of her car. Among the writers who inspired her, Woods credited Sister Souljah, a rapper turned writer who wrote a number of books about African-American culture, as one of her greatest inspirations. She told Savoy, Sister Souljah "opened the door, but Teri Woods broke it down." Beyond the political and industry implications of her writing career, Woods simply wanted to write good fiction that pleases audiences and tells the stories of urban life. "I just want people to feel my story, feel my characters," Woods said in the New York Beacon, "and I want credit for truly representing the streets, which is something no one has received in quite some time."