RAQIYAH MAYS
Raqiyah Mays is a multi-hyphenated author, writer, Executive Producer, and host of the podcast Real Black News. She got her start as an intern at VIBE magazine, where she eventually became a staff member.
Mays was later recruited to work for Sirius/XM, where she wrote and produced a daily show for the legendary DJ Grandmaster Flash. As an NYC radio personality, she hosted a show on the hip hop station Hot 97, the morning show on NYC’s legendary 98.7 Kiss FM, and graced the airwaves on 107.5 WBLS.
In a journalism career spanning two decades, Raqiyah wrote stories covering the intersection of social issues, hip hop, film & TV for everyone from VIBE, The Source, Ebony, Essence, XXL, and Black Enterprise to The Associated Press, Billboard, and Complex. In 2015, Simon & Schuster released her inspirational debut novel, The Man Curse.
The book features a family of women who feel they are cursed never to marry and the soul-searching necessary to break this belief. A semifinalist in ScreenCraft’s 2018 Cinematic Book Contest, the critically-acclaimed novel was turned into an empowerment workshop conducted at domestic violence shelters in NYC and New Jersey. The one-hour TV pilot for The Man Curse, adapted by Mays, was recently named a quarterfinalist in ScreenCraft’s 2019 Fellowship Contest.
No stranger to the book world, Raqiyah contributed a chapter to Where Did Our Love Go: Love & Relationships in the African American Community, an anthology written by African American Film Critics Association (AAFCA) President, Gil Robertson. She was also Reporter at Large for Showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker's book Unbelievable: The Life, Death, and Afterlife of The Notorious B.I.G, which Coker adapted into his debut feature film, Notorious.
The winner of numerous awards, Mays was chosen by retail outlet The Limited, as a dynamic female leader featured in its nationwide “New Look of Leadership” campaign. She was picked by VH1 and featured in its “Future Leader of Black History” commercial series. She’s also written speeches for The Women’s March and its co-chair, Tamika Mallory.
Today, she’s expanded her writing portfolio to the global non-profit sector. During several years working with the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Amnesty International, where she followed in the steps of former Amnesty staff members like Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage and best-selling author J.K. Rowling, Raqiyah wrote as the voice of Amnesty USA’s Executive Director.
She also penned the organization’s campaign messages on issues like police brutality, the Muslim Ban, and the Syrian Refugee Crisis. Her latest non-profit work is with Preemptive Love, an Iraq-based organization dedicated to providing services like food, supplies, medical clinics, and job training to Syrian refugees in the Middle East and asylum seekers at the Southern Border. Raqiyah continues to write scripts while currently working on her second novel.
Raqiyah Mays
- Author & Writer
- Executive Producer & Host of the Podcast Real Black News (Named by Blackdetour.com as one of “10 Black podcasts you should listen to in 2019”)
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