Reniqua Allen-Lamphere
Writer. Founder. Producer.
Reniqua Allen-Lamphere is a journalist, author, and filmmaker who tells stories at the intersection of race, culture, health, and history. She is the founder of Oshun Griot, a wellness app supporting people of color navigating infertility.
She is currently directing a feature-length documentary for public television about Black families, fertility, and the climate crisis. Reniqua is also writing Fertility Noir (Ballantine Books/Penguin Random House), inspired by her own journey with IVF, endometriosis, and fibroids, is part history, part how-to, and part reporting. It tackles the myths around Black fertility and offers honest, expert-backed advice for navigating a system that too often overlooks Black families.
Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Esquire. She has contributed to film, radio, and television projects for PBS, MSNBC, WNYC, and Apple TV+. She was a senior producer for The Problem with Jon Stewart, and a co-executive producer of BlackPop on E!, a docuseries exploring Black culture and success. She has also developed films for Firelight Films and NBC News Studios, including The Debutantes, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Earlier in her career, she worked with Bill Moyers on PBS, producing documentaries and long form interviews on politics, faith, and democracy. She also directed a short film on race and public monuments for the American Museum of Natural History.
Her third book, Black Dreams (Columbia University Press), a cultural history of the American Dream through the lens of Black popular culture, is forthcoming. Her first book, It Was All A Dream: A New Generation Confronts the Broken Promise to Black America (Bold Type Books/Hachette), explored Black millennial life, ambition, and inequality.
Reniqua has received fellowships from New America, The Nation Institute, Demos, and the CUNY/Schumann Center. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Rutgers University and dual degrees in Journalism and Political Science from American University.
Born and raised in New Jersey, she still lives there with her husband and two children—both rainbow babies—who remind her daily why she tells these stories. She’s a lifelong fan of Archie comics, classic Hollywood films (especially anything with Cary Grant), and still finds time to play The Sims. If you hand her a book and a bowl of cookies and cream ice cream—lactose intolerance aside—she’ll call it a perfect day.