Monda Raquel Webb Monda Raquel Webb was born in Charleston, West Virginia in July of 1968. She was brought into this world while both parents attended West Virginia State, thus the nickname “campus baby”. Academia rubbed off on Monda by way of an absolute LOVE and RESPECT for the English language. Sound good? The true story is that she talked so much as a toddler, her mother, Cynthia Webb, told her books were her best friend. And she believed it. So, at age four, her love affair with books began. She read everything she could get her hands on, including Our Bodies, Ourselves and when, at age 6, she asked her mom what was “Preg-Nancy?” Cynthia decided she would channel Monda’s interests. She suggested books like Wuthering Heights, The Sun Also Rises, Jane Eyre, Beowulf, The Catcher in the Rye, you get the picture. Monda devoured Dudley Randall’s The Black Poets, and revered such writers as Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, J. California Cooper, Ann Petry, Dorothy West and Gwendolyn Brooks. She began writing poetry and short stories before she was 10. Rotating between divorced parents, Monda attended day care and public schools in Florida, Arkansas, Maryland and the District of Columbia, graduating in May 1986 from Montgomery Blair HS in Silver Spring, MD. She attended the University of Rhode Island on a basketball scholarship and switched to track in 1987, where she held the school triple jump record of 40 feet for several years. She graduated with a B.A. in Broadcast Journalism in May, 1990. After graduation, Monda worked on a mayoral campaign as a Press Advance person. She experienced the joy of working for the first woman mayor of Washington, DC, Sharon Pratt, and landed a job at the Office of Cable TV, City Cable 16, where she learned TV from the ground up, serving as a grip, production assistant, traffic coordinator, producer, reporter and on-air personality. By 1999, Monda thought heavily of her own mortality, and figured if she died tomorrow, what would she have wanted to accomplish? The answer came quickly. She’d share the poems she’d been writing for several years with the world. Molding herself after her father Robert Webb’s entrepreneurial spirit, she self-published a book of poetry in 2000. Seven years later, Monda published her first novel after “playing around” with it for 10 years. Her ultimate goal? To be signed by a major publisher and write several “unforgettable” novels, short stories and poetry books. Currently,Monda works in Corporate America, sells Real Estate, appears on HGTV as a featured Realtor on “Designed to Sell” and “Get it Sold”. Monda also manages her publishing and freelance writing company, Latebloomer 2000, LLC and has several projects and “collabs” planned in the next few years. Monda was also host of The Book Look video program