Bonnie Greer

Greer visited Scotland as part of a production at the Edinburgh Festival in 1986 and has been based in Britain since then. She told The Sunday Times in 2006 that she owes her life to the move. At the time, she made the decision to migrate to the UK because of her need to "escape the shadow of death" and the declining theatre scene in New York City. She acquired British citizenship in 1997. She has worked mainly in theatre with women and ethnic minorities, and is a former Arts Council playwright in residence at the Soho Theatre and for Nitro, previously known as the Black Theatre Co-operative and now called NitroBeat. Greer has played Joan of Arc at the Theatre Atelier in Paris.

She has written radio plays for BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4, including a translation of The Little Prince. Her plays include Munda Negra (1993), concerning the mental health problems of black women, Dancing on Blackwater (1994) and Jitterbug (2001), and the musicals Solid and Marilyn and Ella. The latter work began as a radio play broadcast in December 2005 (Marilyn and Ella Backstage at the Mocambo) after Greer watched a documentary on Marilyn Monroe which mentioned Monroe's assistance to the jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald as segregation prevented the singer from working at certain venues, especially the Mocambo nightclub. Adapted for the stage, Greer's radio play was given a production at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2006 and was later rewritten and performed at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in 2008. The play was produced at the Apollo Theatre, in London's West End, in November 2009. She is the author of two novels, Hanging by Her Teeth (1994) and Entropy (2009), and is working on a play for the National Theatre Studio.

In April 2005, she was appointed to the British Museum's Board of Trustees and completed two full terms; from late March 2009 she served as Deputy Chairman. In 2011, she accepted the post of President of the Brontë Society. She resigned in June 2015, following internal disagreements about the society's direction.

Greer was a regular contributor to BBC Two's Newsnight Review, and has been a panelist on the BBC's Question Time programme. She appeared on the edition in October 2009 that also featured Nick Griffin, then leader of the British National Party. Commenting after the recording she called it "probably the weirdest and most creepy experience of my life". The encounter formed the basis for her opera, Yes, written for the Royal Opera House with music by Errollyn Wallen, and which premiered there at the Linbury Studio Theatre in November 2011. She was formerly director of the Talawa Theatre Company and has served on the boards of the Royal Opera House and the London Film School. She is also a former theatre critic for Time Out magazine.

Greer's book Obama Music, partly a musical memoir, was published by Legend Press in October 2009. Reviewing it in The Independent, Lesley McDowell said: "Greer expertly weaves in memories of her own upbringing in Chicago, with more humour than you might expect, along with a clear, defined passion for the music she grew up listening to. She wants to show, too, how both the place she lived in, and the songs she listened to, were full of unseen boundaries that had held people back – but also gave them something to fight against." Her biography of Langston Hughes, Langston Hughes: The Value of Contradiction, was published in 2011 (Arcadia/BlackAmber Inspirations). Greer co-produced a documentary film, Reflecting Skin (directed by Mike Dibb) – on representations of black people in Western art – which was shown by the BBC in 2004. She is currently working on a novel about Rossetti. Greer's memoir A Parallel Life was published in 2014 and was described by Joy Lodico in The Independent as "the story of a journey deliberately and bravely taken against all expectations".

Greer was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2010 Birthday Honours for services to the Arts. She received her honour from Prince Charles.

Birthday Honours: Bonnie Greer on her OBE

Writer and broadcaster Bonnie Greer has spoken of her delight at being made an OBE in the Queen's birthday honours list.