NEW YORK - Terry McMillan has been honored with a lifetime achievement award from Essence magazine for her best-selling, irreverent novels about the everyday struggles of modern American black women.

Author Terry McMillan is interviewed at her Danville, Calif., home in this file photo of Jan. 8, 2001. McMillan, author of "How Stella Got Her Groove Back," is to receive Essence magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award on Feb. 7, 2008 in New York. Photo: Noah Berger,

"No single writer today has documented the African-American experience from a contemporary black women's point of view like Terry McMillan," said Patrik Henry Bass, a senior editor at Essence for books and art.

McMillan's best-known books are "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" and "Waiting to Exhale." Both were made into movies.

McMillan, 56, has a long history with Essence. As a journalism student at the University of California at Berkeley, McMillan won an Essence essay contest in 1974 for a piece on black male-female relationships.

The award-winning author and nominees in eight other literary categories were nominated by the editors of Essence. Afterward, a panel of experts in the black publishing field selected the winners.

McMillan and the other winners were to attend the Essence Literary Awards ceremony Thursday evening.

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