Inspired by a meeting with novelist James Baldwin, Random House editor Robert Loomis, and cartoonist Jules Feiffer and his wife, Judy, Angelou broadened her considerable store of anecdotes into autobiography, a particular strength of black writers ranging from Linda Brent and Frederick Douglass to post-slavery narratives of Eldridge Cleaver, Anne Moody, Angela Davis, Claude Brown, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin. She established a rigid working style: beginning with notes in longhand on yellow legal pads, she let the ideas flow. Then, supported by her Bible, dictionary, thesaurus, playing cards, ashtrays, snacks of cheese and bread, and bottles of sherry, she booked a downtown hotel room and sprawled across the bed, composing weekdays from six o'clock a.m. until noon, allowing no one to interfere. If the material flowed at a steady pace, she remained until early afternoon before returning to her residence. She continued for six months, going on several weeks' sabbatical, then returning to her hermitage until she had a manuscript ready for publication. By this process, in 1970, Angelou scored her first literary hit with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, an immediate bestseller and the flagship of a multi-part autobiographical armada.
In 1973, Angelou married her third husband, Paul Du Feu, an English-born carpenter and remodeler, and settled in Sonoma, California. Immersed in projects, she composed music for the movie For the Love of Ivy, published articles, short stories, and poems for Harper's, Black Scholar Mademoiselle, Redbook, Life, Playgirl, Cosmopolitan, Ebony, and Ladies' Home Journal, continued writing autobiographies, produced original plays, lectured at state universities in Kansas and California, and served on the American Revolution Bicentennial Council. She earned an Emmy nomination for her cameo role as Kunta Kinte's grandmother in the 1977 television version of Alex Haley's Roots, adapted Sophocles's Ajax for the American stage, wrote for "Brewster Place," an Oprah Winfrey production, and composed songs for Roberta Flack. In 1981, after divorcing Du Feu, she received the first lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she lectures, organizes writing workshops, and continues publishing.
