Martha Southgate is the author of four novels. Another Way to Dance won the Coretta Scott King Genesis Award for Best First Novel. Jonathan Yardley of The Washington Postnamed The Fall of Rome one of the best novels of 2002. Third Girl From the Left was named Best Novel of the Year from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Her newest novel is The Taste of Salt, published in 2011. Martha's non-fiction articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, O, Premiere, and Essence. Her July 2007 essay from The New York Times Book Review, “Writers Like Me” received considerable notice and appears in the anthology Best African-American Essays 2009.