Courtney Kemp Agboh

Courtney A. Kemp (born May 4, 1977) is an American television writer and producer. She created the 2014 Starz television series Power. She has written for such shows as The Good Wife and Beauty & the Beast.

Kemp lost her father, Herbert Kemp Jr., in 2011. The first episode of Power was dedicated to his memory and he was the inspiration behind the main character James "Ghost" St. Patrick.Courtney and her family lived in Westport, Connecticut where they were one of few black families residing in the town at the time and suffered racial harassment.Kemp describes herself as having been a voracious reader in her youth with an interest in politics.She has a daughter named Charlie. Her ex-husband, a Senior Vice President of Business Affairs at Paramount Pictures named Brian Mawuli Agboh, filed for a divorce in 2016.

Kemp was raised in Westport, Connecticut, and began reading college textbooks at the age of eight. Her father Herbert Kemp Jr was the first African American graduate of Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business. The Kemp family was one of the few African American families in Westport and faced discrimination. By the age of 10 she had begun reading plays by William Shakespeare, eventually coming up with her own stories. In 1994, she graduated from Staples High School and went on to receive her bachelor's degree from Brown University as well as her Master's in English Literature from Columbia University.