About Anita

Photo: Amira Maxwell

Born and raised in Albany, Georgia, Anita maintains a strong connection with this southwest corner of the state. This region is the setting for her debut novel, The Peach Seed, (Published August 1, 2023 | Henry Holt & Co) and represented by Steve Ross Agency. The manuscript was selected as a 2021 Finalist in the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction and was acquired by Retha Powers at Holt in a two-book deal.

In 2002, Anita and her husband, Rob Roehrick, founded the Gaines-Jones Education Foundation, awarding need-based college scholarships to Black students in southwest Georgia and the San Francisco Bay Area in memory of her mother, sister, and father.

Her oral tradition storytelling grew out of an early desire to write and illustrate children’s stories.

She worked many years in San Francisco Bay Area schools as an artist-in-residence, combining storytelling, visual arts and writing in K-12 workshops. She also provided customized presentations for corporations, organizations, school assemblies, senior living, libraries and private clients. Anita has a collection of original stories—well-tested on audiences over many years.

An earlier version of The Peach Seed was a Novella Semi-Finalist in the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition. Anita contributed to the anthology ~ Gardening Among Friends, Practical Essays by Master Gardeners, Edited by Barbara J. Euser; published gardening articles for The Marin Independent Journal, and articles for The Women’s Eye online magazine. She is a Hedgebrook Women Writers-in-Residence alumna and a 2018-2019 Affiliate Artist: Headlands Center for the Arts.