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A brutal murder is committed, and pregnant 13-year-old Ella and her boyfriend are at the center of the murder. Years later, middle-age Ella, now a mother, and married to a pastor, is haunted by the murder— and the ghost of the murdered man.

​Spanning four decades, Ella Pruitt is a sweeping, intimate literary novel that explores the long shadows of family violence, secrecy, faith, and inherited guilt across generations of a Black American family. Moving fluidly between past and present, the novel traces the life of Ella Pruitt, a woman shaped by a traumatic youth in a small Ohio town and by the choices she makes in her efforts to escape it.

At once tender and unflinching, Ella Pruitt is a meditation on memory and moral responsibility—on what it means to protect a child, to belong, to forgive, and to tell the truth. It asks whether healing is possible when justice arrives too late, and whether love can endure once the lies that sustained it are finally exposed.
 ~ 2016 Phillis Wheatley Book Award Finalist ~ Available at all bookstores, as well as in ebook, and in audiobook at Audible Audiobooks

PictureA collection of short stories by Doug Cooper-Spencer
In Gather the Bones, lives change in quiet moments — moments no one sees coming:

• A man finds the mother who abandoned him as a child — and learns why she left.


• In 1976, a carefree night among Black gay friends unravels into tragedy, changing their lives in ways they never imagined.


• After a devastating loss, a married couple must face what happens to love when life doesn’t go as planned.


• A spiritual leader struggles with her conscience before making a decision that alters the course of her life.


• The summer of 1963 marks both a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement and in the life of a boy coming of age Black and gay.


• A Black woman’s desire for a privileged life strains the bond with her twin brother, revealing how far she's willing to go to escape her racial identity.


These are just some of the stories in Gather the Bones — stories of family and trust, identity and privilege, aging, race, sexuality, and the quiet reckoning that comes when life asks us to confront who we truly are.
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A River Runs Beneath Us (Voices & Writings of The Griot Book Project) opens with a powerful timeline documenting Black distinctive (LGBTQ) people in the Americas from 1591 to the present. From there, readers are guided through an intimate journey shaped by the voices and writings of Afro-American distinctive (LGBTQ) elders born before 1960.

These griots came of age Black and gay in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s—decades marked by profound social restriction and danger. Their lives began in places as varied as coal-mining towns and inner-city neighborhoods, eventually carrying them to New York City, Paris, Hollywood, and, for some, prison. Wherever life led them, they bore witness.

Through interviews, memoir, fiction, essays, and poetry, A River Runs Beneath Us gathers their stories into a collective oral and literary history. Within these pages, readers encounter personal connections to cultural and historical figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., Ashford & Simpson, Phylicia Rashad, Debbie Allen, Hugh Hefner, Prince, Glynn Turman, and others whose lives intersected with these griots.

These narratives emerge from eras when policies governing race, gender, and sexuality were especially oppressive. Yet the griots lived openly—with persistence, visibility, and extraordinary resilience.
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Both deeply moving and historically essential, A River Runs Beneath Us: Voices and Writings of The Griot Book Project is not only a work of storytelling—it is a vital book of record.

'This Place of Men' Trilogy Series
The This Place of Men Trilogy is a sweeping three-novel series that spans decades in the lives of two Black gay men. Beginning with a high-school romance in the 1970s, the trilogy follows Otis and Terrell as they move from youth into manhood and ultimately middle age—each shaped by love, loss, ambition, and the changing world around them.

As their lives diverge and intersect across time, the novels explore identity, masculinity, intimacy, and survival within Black distinctive (queer) life. The trilogy includes This Place of Men, People Like Us, and Leaving Gomorrah.
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THIS PLACE OF MEN (Book One)
Sentenced to prison at eighteen and released into a life shaped by poverty and exile, a young gay man returns to his hometown to confront the minister, family members, and townspeople whose betrayal destroyed his future—and to reclaim the truth that was taken from him.
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PEOPLE LIKE US (Book Two)
When a husband finally accepts that he is gay, his marriage comes to an end—forcing two people who once loved each other deeply to redefine family, faith, and respect. As they navigate separation, their greatest challenge becomes protecting their children from the weight of truth, heartbreak, and the world’s judgment.
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LEAVING GOMORRAH (Book Three)
When a gay man learns he has a son conceived during a long-ago one-night encounter, his carefully constructed life is upended. As the young man—hardened by the streets—comes to live with him, father and son must navigate trust, responsibility, and the fragile possibility of redemption.
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Originally written on November 14, 1999, as a private letter from Doug Cooper to his partner Greg during a time of familial pressure and uncertainty, A Letter to a Friend unfolds as both intimate correspondence and philosophical manifesto.

Part I: The Letter
Facing pressure to reconsider living openly as a gay man, Greg receives not an argument, but an offering. Doug carefully dismantles the cultural and religious claims most often used to condemn homosexuality — that it is unnatural, immoral, destructive to family, contrary to God’s will, or a threat to procreation.
He reframes sexual orientation as natural variation within life’s diversity. He examines morality as historically pliant rather than fixed. He distinguishes rigid religious belief from liberating faith, introducing the idea of “The Mystery” — a humble acknowledgment that humanity’s understanding of God is limited. Drawing from his own experience of coming out in 1972 amid criminalization, violence, and discrimination, Doug offers living testimony: life after coming out is not collapse — it is expansion.
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Part II: The Lessons
Through short essays, the letter’s philosophy widens into reflections on identity, fear, naming oneself, loss, renewal, and the refusal to defend one’s existence. Doug explores how fear is weaponized and how faith must be cultivated. He distinguishes labeling from self-identification, insisting that naming oneself in truth is an act of empowerment. He confronts the cost of authenticity, reframing loss as renewal. And he exposes the arrogance embedded in the demand that distinctive (queer) people explain why they exist.
The Closing
The book returns to its most intimate register: a reminder that growing up gay in a hostile world requires strategy — but that self-love must be part of that strategy. Doug does not instruct Greg which path to take. He asks only that whatever path he chooses be rooted in understanding, dignity, and joy.
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Photo by Greg Cooper Spencer
Doug Cooper Spencer is an award-recognized novelist and short fiction writer whose work explores race, identity, history, and the enduring search for belonging. His novel Ella Pruitt was honored by the Phillis Wheatley Book Awards as one of the best works of fiction of 2016, and in 2006 he was named one of Clik Magazine’s Elite 25 Writers.
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He is the author of eight books, including the This Place of Men Trilogy (This Place of Men, People Like Us, and Leaving Gomorrah), A Letter to a Friend, Ella Pruitt, Gather the Bones, A River Runs Beneath Us: Voices and Writings of The Griot Book Project, and The Passenger.

Raised in Lincoln Heights, Ohio, one of the nation’s earliest self-governed African American villages, Doug brings more than five decades of human rights advocacy to his writing. He is currently completing a novel, a memoir, and three screenplays.

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I wonder if you realize how special you are.  Thank you.
 - Donna B.
This Place of Men offers an interesting example of conflict resolution… There's a side story… which will probably surprise most readers.  This Place of Men is a bittersweet love story and Doug Cooper-Spencer has a mature, seasoned voice. It will probably be enjoyable to readers who tire of the usual "we're gay and fabulous" storylines.
- Rod McCullom, ‘Rod 2.0’ website; journalist CNN, The Advocate
I finished reading the entire This Place of Men Trilogy, and must say I was sad to come to the end of the last book in the trilogy, ‘Leaving Gomorrah’ because the world I had come to share with Otis, Terrell, Antonio and the many wonderful characters that peopled the trilogy was one of intimacy; so intimate, in fact that I didn’t want to leave them behind.  BRAVO for the This Place of Men Trilogy!  
​- Yvonne T.
This is one of the most amazing letters I have ever read to say the least.  It is so wonderfully put.  I needed to read this today.  Reading this has changed me today... to being more hopeful of tomorrow... less hurt about people's views of my life, ... and more connected to God's love. That is due to everyone. Thank you for sharing this!!
- Bridget
A great story and a core truth: The life you’ve been prepared for isn’t the one meant for you; sometimes it’s not even the life you’ve been given… The book doesn’t beat you over the head with that truth, but the writer puts it together artfully… you find yourself understanding it even though it’s never plainly stated…. the mark of a good story and a good writer.
- Amazon Reviews
​Saw this book a few weeks ago… picked it up as the back cover caught my interest and I am so glad I did… I fell in love with this book as it is many wondrous things: love story, the Black family, and a story that (makes) one think… The characters are well written, some surprises, and again a wonderful read… I’ve never heard of the author and I feel that I know my Black Gay authors, but this one snuck under my radar.
- Amazon Reviews
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The Griot Book Project
The Griot Book Project is collecting writings and audio recordings of and by Afro-American LGBTQ griots who were born before 1960. The writings will be used in an upcoming book.

Tap the button below if you would like to interviewed, or if you have an interview or other writings or digital audio recording to submit (fiction & non-fiction). Submit to: