* Big Tigger – television host

* Adolfo Carrión, Jr. – former Bronx borough president

* Stanley Jefferson – former professional baseball player

* Nathan Lebron – state politician

* Peter Liguori – entertainment executive [1]

* Miles Marshall Lewis – author and journalist

* Rod Strickland – professional basketball player

* Swizz Beatz – hip-hop producer

“I was born in 1970, the year Toni Morrison wrote The Bluest Eye and Afrika Bambaataa started to deejay. My writing life began eleven years later, when Marvel Comics published my letter to the editor of Captain America. Growing up in the Bronx during the 70s endeared me to hiphop culture from the start, hearing Kool DJ AJ spin records in St. Mary’s Park outside my grandma’s South Bronx window.

From freshman year to my Morehouse graduation, I lived through all the classic albums of Public Enemy, the Cure, De La Soul, Lenny Kravitz, Guns n’ Roses and A Tribe Called Quest before barely working an internship (no pay) at Vibe during their first two issues. Studying entertainment law at the Fordham University School of Law, I ducked out of classes to score interviews as a contributing writer to The Source, writing my first (unpublished) novel studying abroad in London. I finally decided that if I would lie for a living, it would be writing fiction instead of arguing in courtrooms. “(quote from his website