Dr. Jamie Walker is the author of 101 Ways Black Women Can Learn to Love Themselves: A Gift for Women of All Ages and Signifyin’ Me: New and Selected Poems. Originally from Oakland, California, Walker is President and CEO of J.D. Publishing Group. She freelances for several newspapers and magazines, including Heart & Soul and About Time. 

Walker graduated magna cum laude from San Francisco State University, where she studied Theater Arts and Black Studies.  She received both her Masters degree and Ph.D. (with Distinction) in African American and Caribbean Literature from Howard University.

Walker starred in several plays throughout California as a respected and highly praised actress. She won first place in the state of California for her dramatic interpretation of August Wilson's play, Fences, and has toured with The San Francisco Mime Troupe and The African American Shakespeare Company. 

Walker has also hosted a late-night talk show in the District of Columbia on WHBC 830 AM called, "Soul Talk with Jamie Walker"—an inspirational talk show about relationships and matters of the soul. She is a member of The National Association of Black Journalists, Modern Language Association, and The Golden Key National Honor Society.  

Her first book, 101 Ways Black Women Can Learn to Love Themselves: A Gift for Women of All Ages, received stunning reviews from Black Issues Book Review, Upscale, and Heart & Soul magazine.

In Fall 2001, Walker received a distinguished scholarship award from poet Sonia Sanchez on behalf of The Elizabeth Howard and Thorton H. Trust Fund.  That same year, poet Ethelbert Miller recommended Walker for a Lannan Poetry Fellowship at The Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.

Featured on a CNN panel in 2004 along with Ruby Dee, the late Ossie Davis, David Driskell, and Esther Cooper Jackson, Walker has toured and served on panels with numerous writers.  

Her feature stories have graced the covers of The New York Amsterdam News, The San Francisco Bayview, The Washington Informer, The Afro-American, The Tennessee Tribune, and The San Francisco Bayview.

Featured in The San Francisco Examiner, Women in the Moon, The Oakland Tribune, Mosaic, Rhapsody, The African American Literature Book Club Online, The New Poet's Revolutionary Magazine, Walker has also published in BMa: The Sonia Sanchez Literary Review, The Quarterly Black Review, and Sable Literary magazine, which is published in London. 

Praised for her “superior skill in research,” Walker was selected (out of thirty young scholars across the United States) by Camille O. Cosby and Renee Poussaint to join the first class of students in The National Visionary Heritage Fellowship Program.  

The program taught Walker how to perform videotaped documentaries of historic "visionary" elders over the age of 70.   Walker’s chosen "visionary" elder was Esther Cooper Jackson," co-founder of Freedomways magazine in 1961 with W.E.B. and Shirley Graham Du Bois.   

Freedomways magazine chronicled the Civil Rights-Black Arts Movement and featured several well-known Black writers, poets, and artists, including Elizabeth Catlett, Paul Robeson, Angela Davis, Mari Evans, and Ntozake Shangé.

Walker’s written work produced with The National Visionary Leadership Project is now archived at The Smithsonian and featured in a book called A Wealth of Wisdom: Legendary African American Elders Speak (Atria Books 2004), which is edited by Camille Cosby and Renee Poussaint, respectfully.

Walker’s essays and poetry are published in Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art (Third World Press 2002), edited by Tony Medina and Samiya Bashir; It Doesn’t Take a Genius: Five Truths to Inspire Success in Every Student (McGraw-Hill 2005), edited by Tommie Lindsey;           I Woke Up and Put My Crown On: The Project of 76 Voices (Publish America 2005), edited by Rochelle Hart; and Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets and Emcees (Lit Noire Publishing 2006), edited by DuEwa Frazier.

Walker’s poems from her second book, Signifyin’ Me: New and Selected Poems (J.D. Publishing Group 2005) are published in Gumbo for the Soul: The Recipe for Literacy in the African American Community.

Walker has taken playwrighting classes at U.C. Berkeley with P.J. Gibson. In addition, she has taught K-12 students, as well as creative writing, publishing, and playwrighting classes to adults.  

She has also served as Howard University Bookstore’s first trade book buyer and purchased books for Moorland-Spingarn Research Center in Washington, D.C..   Most recently, Walker worked in the Marketing &  Editorial Department at The Howard University Press, where she was responsible for creating ads, press releases, and solely designing the company website.

Walker was labeled a "gifted child" when she was in kindergarten reading on the second grade level. She has not only participated in Gifted and Honors programs all throughout elementary, junior, and high school, but also remained on the Honor Roll throughout her elementary, junior, and high school years.

Walker has been a member of The Golden Key National Honor Society, Gifted & Talented Education, and Upward Bound. Walker has a wise "Old Soul." She is deeply spiritual, very funny, has a "zest" for life, and an exciting, vibrant personality.  

Her next book, an edited collection of essays on Sonia Sanchez, has been praised by Amiri Baraka and Ethelbert Miller.   Both poets deem this long-awaited book to be “a landmark collection.”

Walker's Dissertation, which is separate from her new book on Sonia Sanchez, was also on Sanchez, and she received an "A" with Distinction on her Doctoral Defense.  Walker's Masters Thesis was on author Jamaica Kincaid, and she received an "A" with Distinction on her Thesis Defense. 

Walker is currently working on her first novel.

Please feel free to email her or click here to purchase any of her books.