Beyond Reader News Today

STOKES W. Royal Stokes, 90, an award-winning jazz journalist and author who worked to expand opportunities for women in jazz, died Saturday of myelodysplastic syndrome, a condition related to leukemia. Stokes died at home in Elkins, West Virginia, in the presence of family and with the music of Bunk Johnson playing quietly in the background. Stokes was born in Washington, D.C., in 1930. He grew up in homes in D.C. and Baltimore and on Gibson Island, Maryland, where — at the age of 13 — he ...

W. Royal Stokes has lived a jazz life as unpredictable as the music Chris Richards, The Washington Post Feb. 26, 2021 FacebookTwitterEmail 5 1of5Jazz critic W. Royal Stokes at a 2005 book reading at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D..C.Erika HartmannShow MoreShow Less 2of5"The Essential W. Royal Stokes Jazz, Blues and Beyond Reader" is out now.W. Royal StokesShow MoreShow Less 3of5 4of5W. Royal Stokes. a champion of women in jazz, wrote several profiles of female perfor...

A new anthology compiles decades of music writing from the 90-year-old jazz critic.