“Invigorating! A Pair of Wings is the inspiring, richly detailed American Great Migration story we’ve been missing. Carole Hopson writes heroine and pioneer Bessie Coleman as if she’s been living inside her head. I loved it.” — Crystal Smith Paul, author of Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?

Carole Hopson is a Boeing 737 Captain for United Airlines, based in Newark, NJ. After a remarkable 20-year career as a journalist and executive, she followed her dream to become a pilot and share her passion with others as a flight instructor, while raising her family. Walking away from executive-level positions, she went to flight school with gusto and completed flight training at the peak of her corporate accomplishments.

True to her roots as a writer, Carole published her debut novel: A Pair of Wings, based on the life story of pioneer aviatrix Bessie Coleman, the first American to earn a French civilian pilot’s license.

Carole also heads the Jet Black Foundation, dedicated to sending 100 Black women to flight school by the year 2035.

Carole's Featured Titles

A Pair of Wings: A Novel

Henry Holt and Co |
Historical Fiction

An airline captain crafts a riveting, adventurous novel inspired by the remarkable true life of pioneer aviatrix Bessie Coleman, a Black woman who learned to fly at the dawn of aviation and found freedom in the air

A few years after the Wright brothers’ first flight, Bessie was working the Texas cotton fields with her family when an airplane flew over their heads. It buzzed so low she thought she could catch it in her hands. Bessie was fearless. She knew there was freedom in those wings.

The daughter of a woman born into slavery, Bessie answers the call of the Great Migration. She moves to Chicago, where she wins the backing of two wealthy, powerful Black men―Robert Abbott, creator and publisher of the Chicago Defender, and Jesse Binga, the founder of Chicago’s first Black bank. Abbott becomes her mentor, while Binga becomes her lover. Her true first love, though, remains flying.

But in 1920, no one in the United States will train a Black woman to fly. So, twenty-eight-year-old Bessie learns to speak French and sets off for Europe. Two years ahead of Amelia Earhart, Bessie earns her pilot’s license, and later she learns death-defying stunts from French and German dogfighting combat pilots.

While she finds no prejudice in the air, Bessie wrestles with other challenges on the ground. A plane crash nearly kills her, her brothers seem to be crumbling under the weight of Jim Crow, and, while grappling with tough truths about Binga, Bessie begins to wonder if the freedom she finds in the sky means she must otherwise fly solo.

With tenderness and mastery, Carole Hopson imagines the breathtaking moxie Bessie Coleman harnessed in order to lift herself out of poverty and become known as “Queen Bess.”

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SECOND ACTS

Pursuit of Passion is not a job. It is purpose, dedication and its own reward.

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MOM'S AND WORK - Work|Life Balance

People like to think that high powered jobs and motherhood do not coincide. They do. I say you can have it all. It’s just really hard to have it all at the same time!

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FEAR OF FLYING

Travel today is more accessible than ever before, but fear of flying keeps people on the interstate.

Carole’s Events & Press Page

Jet Black Foundation Link

Honors, Awards & Recognition

AVIATOR AWARDS:
2025 BEACON Excellence Awards as the recipient of our annual Trailblazer Award, United Airlines
Tuskegee Airmen International, Philadelphia Chapter 2024 Keynote Speaker’s Award
Sisters of the Skies SOS Captain’s Club Award, 2023
Conference of Minority Transportation Officials – COMTO – Celebrating Women Who Move the Nation, 2022
Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals, Outstanding Achievement in Attaining the Position of Captain at United Airlines 2022
Women In Aviation Keynote Speaker Award 2023
AEROSTAR Avion Institute Award, For Commitment to inspiring the next generation of female aviators, Bessie Coleman Centennial, 2021

BOOK & SPEAKING AWARDS:
NPR Book of the Day, 2025
ARETE Woman – Speaker Award, 2025
One of Library Journal’s Best Historical Fiction Books, 2024
Women’s World, Best New Books 2024
Essence Magazine, Top 15 Book Pics, 2024
Oprah Daily, August 2022

Media Kit

By clicking the link below you will be directed to a Google Docs Folder
where you can download author photos and cover images.

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