In the Beloved Jonathan Cooke

BEVERLYN FRAY has been a fine artist, a film director, producer and editor, a graphic designer and most importantly, a writer. She has written articles, speeches, short stories and three feature-length screenplays. As a filmmaker in Los Angeles, California, her USC Graduate short film, “The Long Walk Home,” won her six national awards and was produced theatrically into a feature-length narrative film. She has worked in off-Broadway theater and event productions in New York City. She spent extended time in Africa where she filmed the humanitarian work being done for children and families who live in the slums of Kiambo in Nairobi, Kenya, the villages of Nyanza Kagan, Kenya and in Bujumbura, Burundi. During her time in Israel, she was able to document some of the thoughts and experiences of South Sudanese immigrant families being repatriated to their war-torn country.

Throughout her professional career, her travels abroad and her personal experiences, she has found a common thread and the recurring theme of families… fractured, needy, bruised, challenged, yet bonded. It is the importance of family that inspired her to write her first novel, In The Beloved Jonathan Cooke. Her creativity has had many outlets, but words and writing have always been the articulating quill of her imagination, and life is the ink. She has experienced the say-it of the theater, the show-it of film, and now with her first novel, she delves into the tell-it of prose.