Publication Order of Waiting to Exhale Books
| Waiting to Exhale | 1992 |
| Getting to Happy | 2010 |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| Mama | 1987 |
| Disappearing Acts | 1989 |
| How Stella Got Her Groove Back | 1996 |
| A Day Late and a Dollar Short | 2001 |
| The Interruption of Everything | 2005 |
| Who Asked You? | 2013 |
| I Almost Forgot About You | 2016 |
| It’s Not All Downhill from Here | 2020 |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| It Was the Way She Said It: Short Stories, Essays, and Wisdom | 2025 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| It’s OK if You’re Clueless: And 23 More Tips for the College Bound | 2006 |
About Terry McMillan
Terry McMillan (born 18 October 1951) is an American novelist whose bestselling books about the lives, friendships and relationships of African American women include “Waiting to Exhale” and “How Stella Got Her Groove Back”. Both were made into films, and she has published ten novels, beginning with “Mama” in 1987.
McMillan was born in Port Huron, Michigan, the eldest of five children. Her father died when she was a teenager and she was raised by her mother, who worked for Ford. She discovered literature at 16 while working in the local library. After high school she moved to Los Angeles, took writing classes at Los Angeles City College and transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated in journalism in 1977. She later studied film at Columbia University.
“Mama” grew out of a short story of the same name, which the Harlem Writers Guild encouraged her to expand. Unhappy with her publisher’s limited promotion, she wrote to thousands of booksellers herself and the first hardcover printing of 5,000 copies sold out. “Disappearing Acts” followed in 1989, the year she moved to teach at the University of Arizona, and in 1990 she edited “Breaking Ice”, an anthology of contemporary African American fiction.
Her third novel, “Waiting to Exhale” (1992), brought national attention. It stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for months and had sold more than three million copies by 1995, the year Forest Whitaker directed the film version starring Whitney Houston and Angela Bassett. A sequel, “Getting to Happy” (2010), returns to the same four friends in Phoenix 15 years on. “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” (1996) was filmed in 1998 with Angela Bassett and Taye Diggs, “Disappearing Acts” became a cable film in 2000, and “A Day Late and a Dollar Short” was adapted by Lifetime in 2014 with Whoopi Goldberg.
Her later novels are “The Interruption of Everything” (2005), “Who Asked You?” (2013), “I Almost Forgot About You” (2016) and “It’s Not All Downhill from Here” (2020). In 2024 she signed a partnership with Lifetime to executive produce a series of films under the banner “Terry McMillan Presents”. Her most recent book is “It Was the Way She Said It” (2025), a collection of short stories and essays with an introduction by Ishmael Reed.
Photo: annulla from Brooklyn, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).