Johns Hopkins University Press
  • Contributors

Alba Ambert, a novelist, essayist, short-story writer, and poet, was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and grew up in New York. Winner of the 1996 Carey McWilliams Award, her books include Alphabets of Seeds: Poems, A Perfect Silence, The Anarchist's Daughter, and The Eighth Continent and Other Stories.

Jean Andrews has translated the poetry of Nancy Morejón, the Spanish poet Carmen Conde, and the Irish poet Eibhlin Dhubh Ní Chonaill and published five collections of poetry. She has academic interests in early modern Iberian painting and festal culture (including the Empires), nineteenth-century music theater and travel writing, and twentieth-century women's poetry. She is associate professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Nottingham.

Joan Anim-Addo, who was born in Grenada in the Caribbean, is a professor of Caribbean literature and culture and Director of the Centre for Caribbean Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she also teaches courses in other African Diaspora literatures and cultures. She is the founding editor of Mango Season, the journal of Caribbean women's writing. Her publications include Touching the Body: History, Language, & African Caribbean Women's Writing, Framing the Word: Gender and Genre, and other critical books in the field as well as volumes of her creative writing, Imoinda, Haunted by History, and Janie, Cricketing Lady. She is co-editor of I Am Black, White, Yellow: An Introduction to the Black Body in Europe, Interculturality and Gender, and Affects and Creolisation, a special issue of The Feminist Review.

Fred D'aguiar, a native of London who grew up in Guyana, is a distinguished novelist, poet, playwright, and essayist. His books include The Longest Memory (1994 Whitbread First Novel Award), Dear Future (1996 Guyana Prize for Literature), British Subjects, Bill of Rights, English Sampler: New and Selected Poems, Bethany Bettany, Continental Shelf (shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2009, and a UK Poetry Book Society Choice), Children of Paradise, inspired by the tragedy of Jonestown, Guyana, and The Rose of Toulouse. His play A Jamaican Airman Foresees His Death was produced at Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in 1991. He has published nonfiction prose in such periodicals as Harper's Magazine, Wasafiri, Callaloo, and Best American Essays. He teaches courses in literature and creative writing at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Rita Dove, born in Akron, Ohio, is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia, where she has been teaching since 1989. She served as US Poet Laureate (1993–1995) and Poet Laureate of Virginia (2004–2006) and has received numerous literary and academic honors, among them the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the 1996 Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities, a National Humanities Medal from President Clinton, and a National Medal of Arts from President Obama. She has 25 honorary doctorates to her credit, most recently from Yale University. A former president of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) and past chancellor of the honor society Phi Beta Kappa, she is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and [End Page 180] Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and PEN America. Among her books are, most recently, Sonata Mulattica (2010 Hurston/ Wright Legacy Award) and Collected Poems 1974–2004 (a 2016 National Book Awards finalist and 2016 NAACP Image Award winner). In 1985, the Callaloo Fiction Series published her short story collection Fifth Sunday. She also edited the influential Penguin Anthology of 20th-Century American Poetry. Her song cycle Seven for Luck, with music by John Williams, premiered with the Boston Symphony, and her play The Darker Face of the Earth had successful runs at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Kennedy Center in Washington, and the Royal National Theatre in London, among other venues.

Marcelo D'salete is a Brazilian graphic novelist, illustrator, and professor who, before his graduate studies in art history, served as a graphic designer for publishers. He received a master's degree in art history from the University of São Paulo after he studied graphic design at Carlos de Campos College. He first published graphic texts in such periodicals as Quadreca and Front to a receptive audience. And with the publication of his graphic narratives Noite Luz (2008), Encruzilhada (2011), Cumbe (2014), and Angola Janga, Uma História de Palmares (2017), D'Salete has become a visible creative writer inside Brazil, where he was twice nominated (in 2012 and 2015) for the HQ Mix Trophy. Cumbe has been translated into English as Run for It: Stories of Slaves Who Fought for Their Freedom, and, once it is published, the English-language text will extend his readership throughout the English-speaking world.

Lorna Goodison, a Jamaican by birth, is a poet, fiction writer, and painter who was named poet laureate of Jamaica in 2017. She studied at the Jamaica School of Art and at the Art Students League of New York. Her more recent collections of poems include Guinea Woman, Travelling Mercies, Controlling the Silver, Goldengrove, Oracabessa (winner of the 2014 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature), and Supplying Salt and Light. She is also author of a memoir, From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her Island (2009); and three books of fiction, Baby Mother and the King of Swords (1990), Fool-Fool Rose Is Leaving Labour-in-Vain Savannah (2005), and By Love Possessed (2012). She has taught at the University of Toronto, University of Michigan, and other North American universities. In 2013, Jamaica bestowed on her its Order of Distinction as Commander (CD), for her literary achievements.

Yusef Komunyakaa, a native of Bogalusa, Louisiana, is Distinguished Senior Poet and Global Professor at New York University. After he served as a soldier and a US Army correspondent in Vietnam (1969–1970), he studied at the University of Colorado and later received his MFA degree in creative writing from the University of California in Irvine. His books of poetry include Taboo, Dien Cai Dau, Neon Vernacular, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize, Talking Dirty to the Gods, Warhorses, The Chameleon Couch, The Emperor of Water Clocks, and Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth, forthcoming from FSG in 2020. His honors include the William Faulkner Prize (Université Rennes, France), the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and the 2011 Wallace Stevens Award. His plays, performance art, and libretti have been performed internationally and include Saturnalia, Wakonda's Dream, Testimony, and Gilgamesh. He teaches at New York University.

Dannabang Kuwabong, a Ghanaian Canadian, teaches Caribbean literature at the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan. He is author of Visions of Venom (1995), Echoes from Dusty Rivers 1999), Caribbean Blues & Loves Genealogy (2008), and Voices from Kibuli Country [End Page 181] (2013). He has also taught at the University of Port-Harcourt in Nigeria, University of Ghana, and McMaster University in Canada.

Andrea Levy, a native-born Black Briton, is the daughter of Jamaican immigrants: her father landed in England on the Empire Windrush ship in 1948, and her mother later followed. She is author of Six Stories and an Essay (2014) and five novels, the most recent being Fruit of the Lemon, Small Island, and The Long Song. Her novels have garnered for her a number of honors including, for Small Island, the Orange Prize for Fiction (2004), the Whitbread Novel Award and Whitbread Book of the Year (2004), the Orange Prize "Best of the Best" (2005), and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (2005). In 2010, The Long Song was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and in 2011 the novel won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. A reviewer for the Washington Post tells us that The Long Song "reminds us that [Levy] is one of the best historical novelists of her generation."

Maria Helena Lima, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at SUNY Geneseo, was born in Brazil. Her research and teaching focus on Black Atlantic Writing. She translated and co-edited with Miriam Alves a bilingual anthology of short fiction by Afro-Brazilian Women, Women Righting/ Mulheres Escrevendo (Mango, 2005). Other publications include "The Politics of Teaching Black and British" in Black British Writing (Palgrave, 2004), "'Pivoting the Center': The Fiction of Andrea Levy" in Kadija George, Ed., Write Black British: From Post-Colonial to Black British Literature (Hansib Books, 2005), "A Written Song: Andrea Levy's Neo-Slave Narrative" in Entertext, and "The Choice of Opera for a Revisionist History: Joan Anim-Addo's Imoinda as a Neo-Slave Narrative" in Transcultural Roots Uprising. Lima has collaborated with Joan Anim-Addo on many research projects, including the one featured in Synthesis Special Issue on Translating Cultures (AHRC-UK grant).

Nancy Morejón, an African Cuban, is a distinguished poet and intellectual who is known internationally for her poetry. She is also a critic, essayist, translator, and cultural worker. Her various collections of poems include Mutismos (1962), Amor, ciudad atribuída, poemas (1964), Richard trajo su flauta y otros argumentos (1967), Mirar Adentro/ Looking Within: Selected Poems, 1954–2000 (2002), Elogio y paisaje (1996), as well as English translations of some of them, Where the Island Sleeps Like a Wing, translate by Kathleen Weaver (1985), Mirar Adentro/ Looking Within: Selected Poems, 1954–2000, edited by Juanamaria Cordones-Cook (2002), and With Eyes and Soul: Images of Cuba, translated by Pamela Carmell and David Frye (2004). Nación y mestizaje en Nicolás Guillén (Habana: Ediciones Unión, 1982), her literary commentary on her mentor, is also a very significant text. Her poems have been translated in many languages, including German, French, Swedish, Portuguese, Russian, and, of course, English. For her poetry and her other literary work, Morejón has received a number of awards and honors, such as the 1982 Cuban "Premio de la crítica" (Critic's Prize) for Piedra Pulida and Cuba's National Prize for Literature in 2001. In 2008, the writer's section of UNEAC elected her as its president, and in 2013, she was appointed director/ editor of Revista Union, journal of Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (the Union of Writers and Artists).

Grace Nichols, born in Guyana, lives in England. She is the author of a number of poetry collections, the most recent being Startling the Flying Fish (2006), Picasso, I Want My Face Back (2009), and I Have Crossed an Ocean: Selected Poems (2010). I is a Long-Memoried Woman, her first volume of poems, won the 1983 Commonwealth Poetry Prize, and the [End Page 182] adapted film version of the collection won a gold medal at New York's International Film and Television Festival. She is also the author of books for children.

Valerie Cassel Oliver is the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Prior to this position, she spent sixteen years at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Texas, where she was senior curator. She was director of the Visiting Artist Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a program specialist at the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2000, she was one of six curators selected to organize the Biennial for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Cassel Oliver has organized numerous exhibitions including the acclaimed Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970 (2005); Cinema Remixed and Reloaded: Black Women Artists and the Moving Image with Dr. Andrea Barnwell Brownlee (2009); Hand + Made: The Performative Impulse in Art and Craft (2010); and Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art, (2012), which toured through 2015. Cassel Oliver has also mounted numerous solo exhibitions including a major retrospective on Benjamin Patterson, Born in the State of Flux/us, as well as the surveys Donald Moffett: The Extravagant Vein (2011); Jennie C. Jones: Compilation (2015); Angel Otero: Everything and Nothing (2016) and most recently, Annabeth Rosen: Fired, Broken, Gathered, Heaped (2017). Her exhibition "Howardena Pindell: What Remains to be Seen," co-organized with Naomi Beckwith, was featured at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Rose Art Museum at Brandies University.

Howardena Pindell, born in Philadelphia in 1943, studied painting at Boston University and Yale University, and from 1967 to 1979 worked at the Museum of Modern Art, first as Exhibition Assistant, then as Assistant Curator in the Department of National and International Traveling Exhibitions, and finally as an Associate Curator and Acting Director in the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books. In 1979, she began teaching at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, where she is now a full professor. Her work has been featured in many landmark museum exhibitions, such as: Contemporary Black Artists in America (1971, Whitney Museum of American Art), Rooms (1976, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center), Another Generation (1979, The Studio Museum in Harlem), Afro-American Abstraction (1980, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center), The Decade Show: Frameworks of Identity in the 1980s (1990, New Museum of Contemporary Art), and Bearing Witness: Contemporary Works by African-American Women Artists (1996, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta), Energy/Experimentation: Black Artists and Abstraction, 1964–1980 (2006, The Studio Museum in Harlem), High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting, 1967–1975 (2006, Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro), WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (2007, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles), Target Practice: Painting Under Attack, 1949–1978 (2009, Seattle Art Museum), Black in the Abstract: Part I, Epistrophy (2013, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston), and Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age, (2015–2016, Museum Brandhorst; 2016, Museum Moderner Kunst) and We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–1985 (2017, the Brooklyn Museum, New York). She was the subject of the 2018 retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago titled Howardena Pindell: What Remains to Be Seen, which traveled to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (2018) and the Rose Art Museum (2019). Pindell's work is in the permanent collections of [End Page 183] major museums internationally, including: the Brooklyn Museum; the Corcoran Gallery of Art; the Fogg Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; The Studio Museum in Harlem; the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Whitney Museum of American Art; and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven.

Lucia Llano Puertas is a PhD student at Goldsmiths, University of London, working on trauma and memory in Anglophone and Francophone neo-slave narratives and the connectivity between the African and Jewish diasporas. She teaches French language and translation at the University of Westminster.

Lowery Stokes Sims is a curator and scholar in modern and contemporary art, craft, and design, specializing in the work of African, Latino, Native, and Asian American artists. She recently retired as Curator Emerita from the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, where she served as the Charles Bronfman International Curator and the William and Mildred Ladson Chief Curator. Sims served on the education and curatorial staff of The Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1972 to 1999 and as executive director, president, and adjunct curator for the permanent collection at The Studio Museum in Harlem from 2000 to 2007.

Toni Stuart is a South African poet, performer, and spoken word educator who writes in English and Afrikaans. She is author of Innocent Wisdom, Ma ek ko huis toe, and The Ground's Ear. She recently received an MA degree from Goldsmith College, University of London. [End Page 184]

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