Rochelle Riley

A force of nature, author, essayist, blogger and arts advocate. Rochelle spent nearly a quarter century as a columnist when she left the Detroit Free Press in 2019 to focus on arts and culture. She is now the Director of Arts and Culture for the City of Detroit. She left journalism with a bang, getting inducted into the North Carolina Media and Journalism Hall of Fame and receiving the National Headliner Award for best local columns, both in 2019. She also is a member of the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame. She also is co-founder of Letters to Black Girls, an initiative to give letters of advice and encouragement from women across the country to girls across the country.