MK Asante is a bestselling author, award-winning filmmaker, hip-hop artist, and professor who CNN calls “a master storyteller and major creative force.”

Asante is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Buck, described by Maya Angelou as “A story of surviving and thriving with passion, compassion, wit, and style.” Buck is a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and an NAACP Image Award – Outstanding Literary Work nominee. His other books are It’s Bigger Than Hip Hop, Beautiful. And Ugly Too, and Like Water Running Off My Back.

Asante is a Sundance Feature Film Fellow for the movie adaptation of Buck. Asante directed The Black Candle, a prize-winning Starz TV movie. He wrote and produced the film 500 Years Later, winner of five international film festival awards, and produced the multi award-winning film Motherland.

Asante studied at the University of London, earned a BA from Lafayette College, and an MFA from the UCLA School of Film and Television.

Asante has toured in over 40 countries and has lectured at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, as well as hundreds of other universities. He was awarded the Key to the City of Dallas, Texas.

Called “the voice of a new generation” by Essence, he has been featured on the CBS Early Show, NBC News, BBC, NPR, BET, and MTV. He was selected as a MSNBC The Grio 100 History Makers in the Making. Asante’s essays have been published in USA Today, Huffington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and the New York Times.

He recently made his debut as a hip hop artist on the song “Godz N The Hood” featuring Talib Kweli. His inspirational story “The Blank Page” is featured in the #1 New York Times Bestseller, Chicken Soup for the Soul: 20th Anniversary Edition.

Asante is a tenured professor of creative writing and film in the Department of English and Language Arts at Morgan State University.