Sandra Kitt is an African-American author of contemporary romance novels. Her works have frequently made it to Essence magazine's "Black Board" bestseller lists.
Sandra Kitt was born in New York City as the eldest of four children. Her dream was to illustrate children's books. After graduating from the Music and Art High School in New York, she earned a bachelor's degree in fine arts from CUNY. During college she worked part-time at the astronomy library at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Following her graduation, she spent several years working at a small advertising agency before returning to CUNY to pursue a master's degree. After completing half of the work required by her master's program, Kitt left school to become the head librarian at the astronomy library where she had previously worked.
Although Kitt was comfortable with the job of cataloging the collection, she enrolled in classes at the Hayden Planetarium to learn more about astronomy so that she would be better at her job. Through these classes she met many guest speakers such as Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov. In 1986, Asimov asked Kitt to illustrate a book he was writing on Halley's Comet.
Kitt began writing in the early 1980s for her own enjoyment. In six weeks, she had transformed her first idea into a 500-page manuscript. She continued to work on her ideas, finishing two additional manuscripts in the next year and a half. Shortly after finishing her third story, Kitt read an article in the New York Times about an editor who was beginning a new line of books for Harlequin. Kitt called the editor, who requested two of Kitt's novels. Within a week, the editor had purchased both books, Adam and Eva and Rites of Spring. In 1984 all three of her novels were published, making Kitt the first black author to write for Harlequin.
In 1995, Kitt emerged from the romance genre with her first mainstream novel, The Color of Love. This book has twice been optioned for film, once by HBO, and had nine printings by 2002.
Her novels featured African-American characters, who rarely appeared in the gothic romances which she enjoyed reading. Kitt was one of the first authors within women's fiction to write from both the female and male point of view. Unafraid to tackle social issues in her works, Kitt has used her novels to study surrogate motherhood, abandoned children, race relations, and interracial/class differences. She has also often tackled interracial relationships.
Kitt has been able to use her fine arts degree to illustrate one of her novels. In 1993 she designed and painted the cover that was eventually used for her novel Love Everlasting.
In 2000, Kitt was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for contributing a story to the anthology Girlfriends. Kitt has been nominated three times for Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Awards. She is a recipient of their Career Achievement Award.
In addition to her writing, Kitt maintains her job as librarian at the museum and teaches a publishing and creative writing course at a college (as of 2002). She has also written two film scripts and has interned with ABC for daytime soap operas.
