Dates

• Existence: 1956-

Biography

Venise Torriana Berry, author, journalist and educator, was born in 1956 to Jean and Virgil Berry and reared in Des Moines, Iowa. In 1977, she received a bachelor's degree with a double major in journalism and mass communication from the University of Iowa. Two years later, she received her master's degree in communication studies, also from the University of Iowa. She earned her Ph.D. in Radio, Television and Film from the University of Texas in 1989.

Berry worked in various radio stations in Texas as a news reporter and director. While in Texas, she taught mass communication and had administrative responsibilities at Huston-Tillotson College and served as an instructor of telecommunications at Texas Southern University. In 1991, Berry returned to the University of Iowa to assume the position of assistant professor of journalism and mass communication.

Berry is the author of the novel So Good and co-editor of Mediated Messages and African-American Culture: Contemporary Issues, both of which were published in 1996. She is also the author of several articles pertaining to music and the media's influence on black society. In 1998, Berry received the Myers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America for her work on Mediated Messages and African American Culture. This national award is given annually to the best scholarship on the subject of intolerance in North America.

Berry has one daughter named Averi, born in the fall of 1996.

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