Participant Bios

Opal Palmer Adisa

Diverse and multigenre, Opal Palmer Adisa, is an exceptional talent, nurtured on cane-sap and the oceanic breeze of Jamaica.  Writer of both poetry and prose, as well as being a photographer, professor/educator and cultural activist, Adisa has lectured and read her work throughout the United States, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Germany, England and Prague, and has performed in Italy and Bosnia.

An award-winning poet and prose writer Adisa has 14 titles to her credit, including the novel It Begins with Tears (1997), that Rick Ayers proclaimed as one of the most motivational works for young adults. She has been a resident artist in internationally acclaimed residencies such as El Gounda (Egypt), Sacatar Institute (Brazil), and Tryon Center (North Carolina), and Headlines Center for the Arts (California, U.S.A.). Opal Palmer Adisa’s work has been reviewed by Ishmael Reed, Al Young, and Alice Walker, who described her work as “solid, visceral, important stories written with integrity and love.”

Following in the tradition of the African griot, Adisa, an accomplished storyteller, commands the mastery and extraordinary talent of storytelling, exemplary of her predecessors. Through her imaginative characterizations of people, places and things, she is able to transport her listeners to the very wonderlands she creates.

A professor of graduate creative writing and literature at California College of the Arts, Adisa has taught at several universities, including Stanford University and University of California, Berkley, and University of the Virgin Islands. Her poetry, stories, essays, and articles on a wide range of subjects have been collected in more than 200 journals, anthologies, and other publications, including Essence magazine.  Adisa has also conducted workshops in elementary through high school, museums, churches and community centers, as well as in prison and juvenile centers.

A vivacious, multitalented speaker, Opal Palmer Adisa will enthrall and mesmerize you with her words. Published works include: Painting Away Regrets, novel (December 2011);

Caribbean Erotic, anthology (co-edited with Donna Aza Weir-Soley, 2010);What a Woman Is, poetry and paintings (with Egyptian painter Shayma Kamel, 2010; Amour Verdinia, poetry chapbook (2009); Conscious Living, poetry chapbook (2009); I Name Me Name, poetry collection (Peepal Tree Press, 2008); Until Judgment Comes, short story collection (2006); Eros Muse, poetry and essays, (Africa World Press, 2006); Caribbean Passion, poetry collection (Peepal Tree Press, 2004); The Tongue Is a Drum, poetry/jazz CD with Devorah Major (2002); Leaf-of-Life, poetry collection (Jukebox Press, 2000); It Begins With Tears, fiction novel (Heinemann, 1997); Tamarind and Mango Women, poetry collection (1992); Fierce Love, poetry/jazz recording with Devorah Major (1992);

Traveling Women, short story collection (1989); Bake-Face and Other Guava Stories, short story collection (1986); Pina, The Many-Eyed Fruit, children’s book (1985).

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond

Sarah M. Broom

Sarah M. Broom is a New Orleans native whose essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Oxford American, O, The Oprah Magazine and elsewhere.  She received her undergraduate degree in anthropology from the University of North Texas, before beginning her career as a journalist working in Rhode Island, Dallas, and Hong Kong (for Time Asia), among other cities.  Broom received her master's degree in magazine journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, and worked as an assistant editor at O, The Oprah Magazine for several years, before spending more than a year in Burundi, East Africa, where she researched the effect of forced displacement and migration on rural families, and helped develop innovative human rights-focused programming for the independent Radio Publique Africaine (African PublicRadio). She's worked as senior writer for Mayor C. Ray Nagin after Hurricane Katrina and most recently served as executive director of Village Health Works, a New York-based international nonprofit that provides health care to Burundi's poorest. She is currently at work on The Yellow House, a nonfiction work about her life growing up in New Orleans, which will be published by Grove Atlantic in 2013. Broom lives in New Orleans.

Victoria Brown

Victoria Brown was born in Trinidad and at age 16 came alone to New York, where she worked as a full-time nanny for several years. She attended LaGuardia Community College and went on to major in English at Vassar College. She earned an MA in Colonial and post-Colonial literature at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England. Eventually, she returned to New York, where she worked for several years as a full-time lecturer in the English Department at LaGuardia Community College. Her first novel, Minding Ben, was published by Voice/Hyperion April 2011 and is slated for its paperback release later this year. Brown has been profiled in the New York Times, New York Newsday, Library Journal and The Trinidad Guardian. She completed her MFA in fiction at Hunter College last January. Brown lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and is working on her second novel.

Carolyn A. Butts

Carolyn A. Butts is the publisher/founder of African Voices, a leading nonprofit arts magazine devoted to publishing fine art and literature by artists of color. Founded in 1992, African Voices will celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2012. She served as an assistant press secretary to former New York State Comptroller H. Carl McCall and a press aide to former Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger. A former New York Post reporter, Butts was featured in Ms. Magazine’s October/November 2001 “Women to Watch” column for her outstanding achievements.

Butts is the founder the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival & Lecture Series (www.reelsisters.org), an annual Brooklyn-based festival for women of color in the film industry. In 1996, Butts coproduced a short film titled Underground Voices with playwright/poet Reg E. Gaines. She is currently working on her first feature length documentary, Imhotep Gary Byrd: The Drum Master, a portrait celebrating the pioneering radio show host/producer of “The Global Black Experience.”

In 2010, Butts received the Zora Neale Hurston Award for partnering with the Brooklyn Public Library to organize book discussions and events around Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. The National Endowment for the Arts awarded African Voices a The Big Read grant to promote the reading of Ms. Hurston’s novel.

Her dedication to public service and the arts has won her many awards, including the Ageis Society’s African-American Achievement Award (2001), NAACP’s Women Making History Award (2000) and The Network Journal’s 40 Under Forty Award (1999).

JLove Calderón

JLove Calderón is a white woman who is an author, activist, and social entrepreneur working on issues of social justice, race, and gender. She has authored four books: We Got Issues! with Rha Goddess; That White Girl (optioned for film); Conscious Women Rock the Page! Using Hip-Hop Fiction to Incite Social Change (nominated for a NAACP Image Award) with Marcella Runell Hall, E-Fierce, and Black Artemis; and Love, Race, and Liberation; 'Til the White Day Is Done (finalist in the social change category of the 2010 National Indie Excellence Awards) with Marcella Runell Hall. Her articles on hip-hop culture, white privilege, and social justice have appeared in The New York Times, Self Magazine, The Source magazine, among others. She has also contributed to Who's Your Mama? The Unsung Voices of Women and Mothers (edited by Yvonne Bynoe). For her consistent dedication as an activist, Calderón has received numerous awards, including the Union Square Award for her activism, and Self Magazine's Self Starter of the Year Award. Her work keeps her on the national lecture circuit where she speaks regularly at conferences and colleges, including Harvard, UCLA, Columbia, and many others.

Wahida Clark

After serving a nine-and-a-half-year prison sentence, Wahida Clark was released to a Halfway House on June 13, 2007, from the federal prison camp in Alderson, West Virginia.

Since then, she has been crowned the “Queen of Thug Love Fiction” by Nikki Turner, the “Queen of Hip-Hop Fiction.” She created the thug love fiction genre, which is a subgenre of street lit as cited in The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Street Literature by Vanessa Irvin Morris. She also is the first street-lit author to pen a series, thus establishing the trend. Clark’s style of writing is the “template” for urban literature. When you read her novels, they are so real you are convinced of one of three things: you know the characters; you want to know the characters; or you are one of the characters. Her New York Times, Essence , and USA Today  best-selling novels include Thugs and the Women Who Love Them, Every Thug Needs a Lady, Thug Matrimony, Thug Lovin’, Payback Is a Mutha, Payback with Ya Life, Sleeping with the Enemy, The Golden Hustla and the first anthology edited and compiled by her, What’s Really Hood! Part 5 of her Thug Series. The highly anticipated Justify My Thug underCash Money Content made its debut at No. 19 on the New York Times best-seller list, one of the few urban-lit books to do so. Her Thug Series has sold more than 300,000 copies and the Payback Series has sold more than 150,000 copies. Her next release in April of 2012 is Payback Ain’t Enough.

Clark is vice president of the nonprofit organization based out of East Orange, New Jersey, Prodigal Sons and Daughters Redirection Services, a re-entry program for convicts and ex-convicts. She has given motivational speeches and shared her story at high schools in New York, New Jersey, and halfway houses throughout New Jersey.

She is also vice president of Phoenix Academy Inc., an organization that also provides support groups and mentors for at-risk youth.  The ultimate goal of Phoenix

Academy is to establish a charter and vocational training schools.

Today, Clark operates her publishing company, Wahida Clark Presents Publishing, out of East Orange, New Jersey. WCP currently has 11 authors, 15 titles, which can be found in stores across the country, including three young adult novels, is the fastest-growing and most popular urban independent publishing house in the industry

William Jelani Cobb

Jerry Craft

Jerry Craft is the creator of Mama’s Boyz, an award-winning comic strip that has been distributed by King Features Syndicate since 1995; making him one of the few syndicated African-American cartoonists in the country.  His comic strip follows the lives of Pauline Porter, a widow raising her two teenage sons (Tyrell and Yusuf) while also running the family bookstore. Craft has won three African American Literary Award Show Open Book Awards for “best comic strip” (2011, 2009, and 2004).

Craft has published three Mama’s Boyz books. The first, Mama’s Boyz: As American as Sweet Potato Pie! was named in Great Books for African American Children. Since then, the strip has been featured in Chicken Soup for the African American Soul, Chicken Soup for the African American Woman’s Soul, and The Idiot’s Guide to Comedy Writing.  His most recent, Mama’s Boyz: The Big Picture, is the 2010 S’Indie Award Winner for best children’s book and was featured in School Library Journal.

In addition, he has illustrated eight children’s books, working directly with the authors to bring their text to life.  Among them are Hillary’s Big Business Adventure;  Looking to the Clouds for Daddy; Please Don’t Yell at We; My Hair Is Curly; Please Won’t You Listen to Me; A Is for Anacostia; My Surgery; Danica Dramatica, and others. Craft’s illustrations have also appeared in national publications such as Essence magazine as well as comic books, greeting cards, book covers, and board games.

Although humorous, Mama’s Boyz has also teamed up with several national organizations to help raise awareness for serious topics. His work for the American Diabetes Association earned him two Outstanding Supporter Awards. In addition, he has helped to fight childhood obesity with the American Council for Fitness and Nutrition; raise awareness of organ and tissue donation for Donate Life America; and increase support for the DC Campaign to Prevent Teenage Pregnancy. The latter earned him a “Conversation Starter” award.

Craft is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts where he received his BFA degree in advertising. After working in the ad world for a dozen years as a copywriter, he got his first job as a cartoonist working with Barbara Slate on a variety of comic books and graphic novels for Marvel and Harvey Comics. This was followed by eight years at King Features Syndicate where he wrote sales brochures for some of the world’s most popular comic strips. Before stepping out on his own, he was the editorial director for the Sports Illustrated for Kids Web site where he was nominated for a New Media Award by the National Cartoonists Society for his series of popular Flash cartoons.

Angela P. Dodson

Linda A. Duggins

Linda A. Duggins is the director of multicultural publicity at the Hachette Book Group. She is the cofounder of the Harlem Book Fair, where she helped to create a nationally recognized venue that promotes literacy and literary expressions with writers of the Diaspora. Duggins is the creator and producer of The International Women's History Month Literary Festival, an annual event held at The Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland, which honors and celebrates women writers and the literature they produce across the globe. Jasmin Darznik, Iris Gomez, Elizabeth Nunez, Sarita Mandanna, Bernice L. McFadden, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, and Tiphanie Yanique are among the writers who have been instrumental in establishing the flavor of the festival. As a member of  the Board of Directors of the National Book Club Conference, whose mission is to advance literacy and knowledge through reading and dialogue, Duggins moderates an annual panel discussion with writers and professionals in the book publishing industry. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Antigua & Barbuda International Literary Festival, held in Antigua, and the Board of Directors of the Queensbridge Scholarship Fund, facilitating the higher educational pursuits of inner- city, college-bound students from the Queensbridge and Ravenswood housing developments in New York City, where she grew up.  Her most recent awards in 2011 include The Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by Black Pearl Magazine/EDC Creations in Atlanta Georgia; the Baltimore Times Newspaper Positive People Award and The Manie Barron Publishing Executive Award, given to her by the Bayou Soul Writers and Readers Conference.  Basketball star Shaquille O'Neal, television sports commentator James Brown, actress Pam Grier, Leila Cobo, Kimberla Lawson Roby, Raul Ramos, and Jacqueline E. Luckett are among the many authors represented by Duggins at Hachette. 

Camille T. Dungy

2011 American Book Award winner Camille T. Dungy is author of Smith Blue
(Southern Illinois University Press, 2011), winner of the 2010 Crab Orchard Open Book Prize, Suck on the Marrow (Red Hen Press, 2010), and What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison (Red Hen Press, 2006). She is editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (UGA, 2009), co-editor of From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great (Persea, 2009), and assistant editor of Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade (University of Michigan Press, 2006). Dungy has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, Cave Canem, the Dana Award, and Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She is a two-time recipient of the Northern California Book Award (2010 and 2011), a Silver Medal Winner in the California Book Award (2011), and a two-time NAACP Image Award nominee (2010 and 2011). Dungy was a 2011 finalist for the Balcones Prize;> her books have been shortlisted for the 2011 Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award, the PEN Center USA 2007 Literary Award, and the Library of Virginia 2007 Literary Award.

Robert Fleming

Interested in psychology and sociology, Robert Fleming came to writing as a fluke in the early 1970s when a friend, Willard Jenkins, allowed him to substitute for him as a music writer at a local magazine in Cleveland. Reading had always been a favorite pastime for Fleming, but writing was something he never imagined himself doing. While studying full time for a degree in psychology at t a local college, he worked full time during the day as a welfare case worker, squeezing time in doing interviews for Scene Magazine with people like Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan, Minnie Riperton, Ray Charles, Bob Marley, Sun Ra, and a host of other jazz and pop greats.

It wasn’t until he came to New York as a young writer that a whole realm of possibilities opened for Fleming in that area. He landed his first “real” writing job at Encore magazine, a pioneering Black newsmagazine in 1977, working as an associate editor. Despite hassles, the experience at the publication was extremely beneficial, giving him a chance to work with such talents as Nikki Giovanni, Ivan Webster, Paula Giddins, and Henry Jackson.

Fleming worked on hard news stories, such as the involuntary sterilization of young poorwomen in several southern states, political corruption on a national level, the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, medical experiments conducted on Black patients at several East Coast medical sites, and the spate of police brutality cases nationwide.  In 1979, he wrote a story that would change his life: a car tour of the Deep South, where he interviewed poor Black families in rural Alabama and Mississippi, spoke with plantation owners in Georgia and Louisiana about their abuse of their Black tenant farmers, and conducted a late-night talk with a group of hooded Klansmen outside of Anniston, Alabama. This series earned him a scholarship to Columbia University’s noted School of Journalism.
After his tour of duty at the J School, he worked for a time with former CBS News President Fred Friendly, former boss of the legendary Edward R. Morrow, as a staff writer for the PBS TV show Media and Society. A chance meeting at one of the show’s tapings landed him a job as a reporter at The New York Daily News, where he worked throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. While there, he learned the world of hard New York news from the street up, earning a New York Press Club, a Revson Fellowship, a New York City citation, and several other honors  for his work..

With a strike looming, Fleming retired at the end of 1991 to write and teach. Since that time, he’s published work in Essence, Black Enterprise, The Source,   U.S. News & World Report, Omni, Black Issues Book Review, Bookpage, Quarterly Black Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Publishers Weekly.

He has taught two courses at The New School: “Media and the Black Experience,” which was essentially a survey film course of African-Americans from 1900 to current times, and another course, “Hard and Soft News: Journalism for a New World,” a writing intensive of political writing. The courses continued for four years.

Anthony Grooms

Anthony Grooms identifies himself as a “Writer of Conscience,” strongly influenced by the likes of John Oliver Killens, with whom he briefly studied.  “Mr. Killens impressed upon me the efficacy of writing,” says Grooms.  “Writing has the power to change lives, and that is why I commit to stories and poems that reflect on social and psychological struggles.”  Grooms writes on a variety subjects in several genres, from historical fiction to science fiction. His most notable work, however, has been about the American Civil Rights Movement in the southern United States. He is the author of Bombingham, a novel; Trouble No More, a collection of stories; and Ice Poems, a chapbook.  His stories, essays, and poems have appeared in a number of anthologies and literary journals, most recently in It’s All Love: Black Writers on Soul Mates, Family, and Friends and .African American Review. For more information, please go to www.AnthonyGrooms.com.

Writing in The Village Voice, Ishmael Reed observed: “Bombingham is constructed so well that it could be used as a textbook in writing classes. It’s a perfect traditional novel. There are characters whom you feel for. The scenes are so vivid that they could be staged without any adaptation. The characters’ speeches tell you as much about the characters as the excellent descriptions. Well-crafted novels are common, however, Grooms brings more to his book. His talent and persistence are evident in this virtuoso performance, in which a variety of fictional techniques are on full display. He has the rare ability to transport the reader to those times about which he writes.”

Grooms’s new work focuses on Black American and African relationships, Black Americans in Sweden, and the legacy of the Moore’s Ford lynching in Georgia. His work has been recognized by The Hurston/Wright Foundation and recipient of a Lillian Smith Book Award. He lives and teaches in Atlanta.

Lita Hooper

Lita Hooper is a poet, playwright, and educator.  Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including Tempu Tumpu/walking Naked: African Women’s Poetic Self-portrait (2009), Crux: Conversations in Words and Images from South Africa to South USA (2008), The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (2008), Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem First Decade (2006), Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art (2005).  She is the author of two chapbooks, Legacy and Perspectives, and a critical biography, Art of Work: The Art and Work of Haki Madhubuti (2006).  Her work has also been published online and in print journals and magazines, including The Chattahoochee Review, poetrymidwest, Drumvoices Revue, Essence, The Drunken Boat, Reverie, and Pluck!

She is a coeditor of 44 on 44: Forty-Four African American Writers on the Election of the 44th President of the United States (2011).  Her collection of poems Thunder in Her Voice: The Narrative of Sojourner Truth was recently published in 2010 by Willow Books. 

In 2007, Hooper’s poem “Love Worn” was selected for the American Life in Poetry Series, which as a circulation of one million readers.  The recipient of the 2007 Emerging Artist Grant from the City of Atlanta’s Office of Cultural Affairs, Dr. Hooper has been a featured reader at various colleges, including Spelman College, Morehouse College, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Savannah State University. She has attended numerous workshops, including the Fine Letterpress Workshop at the Center for Book Arts, Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Cave Canem Poetry Workshop Retreat, and Squaw Valley Poetry Workshop.

Keorapetse Kgositsile

Professor Keorapetse Kgositsile is South Africa's National Poet Laureate.
In 1961, Kgositsile was one of the first young members of the African National Congress (ANC) instructed to leave the country by the leadership of the national liberation movement.

After a year in Tanganyika (now Tanzania), where he worked on Spearhead Magazine as Frene Ginwala's editorial assistant, he received a scholarship to study literature and creative writing in the United States.  Since his first post at Sarah Lawrence College in New York in 1969, he taught literature and creative writing at a number of universities in the United States and on the African continent, including the University of Denver, Wayne State University, New School for Social Research, University of California at Los Angeles and the universities of Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia and, in the mid-1990s, Fort Hare.

Kgositsile is one of the most internationally acclaimed and widely published South African poets.  His poetry collections include My Name Is Afrika, Heartprints, To the Bitter End, If I Could Sing, This Way I Salute You.  He has been the recipient of a number of literary awards, including the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, the Harlem Cultural Council Poetry Award, the Conrad Kent Rivers Memorial Poetry Award, the Herman Charles Bosman Prize, and a number of others.  In 2008, he was awarded the National Order of Ikhamanga: Silver (OIS).

Between 2004 and 2009 Professor Kgositsile was the special adviser to the then Minister of Arts and Culture, Dr. Z. Pallo Jordan.  He is, again, currently the special adviser to the Minister of Arts and Culture, Mr. Paul Mashatile.  He is a founding member of the ANC Veterans League and is also a member of the ANC National Centenary Task Team.

Montague Kobbe

Montague Kobbe (1980), German national, born in Caracas, Venezuela, to German father and Venezuelan mother; began studies in literature and philosophy in the Catholic University of Caracas (1998); departed Venezuela to complete a degree in English and philosophy at the University of Bristol (2000); followed by a master’s in American literature and culture at the University of Leeds (2003); attended the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich as exchange student (2004); produced a 15,000-word dissertation linking the literary style of Early Modernism with contemporaneous scientific discoveries (2004).

He travelled extensively in Western Europe, settling back in Bristol in 2005. Kobbe engaged in the compilation of Masquerade, a collection of short stories in English, and La luz que da el alcohol sentimental, a similar collection in Spanish; also in the publication of a number of freelance articles in The Anguillian newspaper (circulation: 2,000), including onsite reports of the FIFA 2006 World Cup in Germany. Following a long tour of Eastern Europe, he relocated to London in 2006, completed On the Way Back, a novel, and worked as lead writer for Generous magazine, Anguilla. After almost two years working for legal publisher Chambers and Partners in London, he moved to Anguilla (2008) to carry out research for a new novel, The Night of the Rambler. Since then, he has kept a regular literary column in Sint Maarten’s The Daily Herald (circulation: 6,000), and often contributes to Miami’s el Nuevo Herald,with articles focusing on new Venezuelan literature. His short story “The Message,” an excerpt from The Night of the Rambler, was included on the University of the Virgin Islands’ The Caribbean Writer (Vol. 25, 2011).His work has been published in Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, Argentina, Curacao, Sint Maarten, Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, UK, USA, USVI, and Venezuela

K'wan

Twentysome-odd years ago, K'wan was born to a poet and a painter. Around the age of three, he showed a natural talent for drawing and painting, convincing just about everyone that art is where his fortune would lie. From as early as his freshman year in high school, K'wan had attracted the attention of several schools offering scholarships to the young artist, but life would have a different plan for him.

Like a good number of children who came up in the crack era, drugs would eventually rob K'wan of his stable foundation but never his creativity. As K'wan grew older and life got harder, his passion for art gave way to a fascination with fast money and short cut out of his situation. This mode of thinking landed him in the Livingston County jail where he would feel the first sparks of another talent, only to have it sidelined until three years later when his mother was diagnosed with cancer. With her passing she bestowed her greatest gift upon her troubled child, the ability to express himself through written word.

In 2002, K'wan hit the scene with his debut novel Gangsta, under Triple Crown Publications. What started as an argument went on to become a part of urban-lit history and an Essence best seller, as well as drawing rave reviews overseas.

After penning his second novel, Road Dawgz, K'wan drew the attention of St. Martin's Press. The literary powerhouse quickly signed K'wan to a three book deal, the first of which being Street Dreams; which has become one of his best-selling novels to date. K'wan's titles also include Hoodlum (2005), Eve (2006), Hood Rat (2006), Flexin & Sexin: Sexy Street Tales, vol. 1 (2007), Blow: A G-Unit Novella (2007), Still Hood (2007), Gutter (2008), Section 8 (2009), Flirt: An Anthology (2009), From Harlem with Love: A Short (2010), The Leak: A Hood Rat Short (2010), Welfare Wifeys (2010), Gangland (2011), Eviction Notice (2011). and the highly anticipated Animal, which will be released under Cash Money Content in 2012. K'wan is also the author of several dark fantasy novels written under a pseudonym.

Through his work, K'wan has helped to empower thousands of young people not only to discover the wonderment of the written word, but to seek positive routes in reaching their goals. He has successfully made the transition from a troubled youth to one of the most powerful voices in contemporary fiction.  

Since his insertion into the publishing world, K'wan has been featured in Vibe magazine, Pages, King, Felon, Big News, The New York Press, and Time magazine, to name a few. He was also interviewed by MTV news for a feature on hip-hop fiction, and a guest on Power 105's morning show. In addition to being an accomplished author, K'wan is also a motivational speaker and C.E.O of Black Dawn, Inc. A small press set up to help first-time authors to sharpen their crafts and get their work into print.  

Haki R. Madhubuti

Haki R. Madhubuti, founder and president of Third World Press, is a leading poet and one of the architects of the Black Arts Movement. Madhubuti—publisher, editor, and educator—has been a pivotal figure in the development of a strong Black literary tradition. He has published more than 31 books (some under his former name, Don L. Lee) and is one of the world’s best-selling authors of poetry and non-fiction. His Black Men: Obsolete, Single, Dangerous? The African American Family in Transition (1990) has sold more than one million copies. Selected titles include: Don’t Cry, Scream! (1969), Tough Notes: A Healing Call for Creating Exceptional Black Men (2002), and Run Toward Fear (2004). His poetry and essays were published in more than 75 anthologies from 1997 to 2010. His recent releases are YellowBlack: The First Twenty-One Years of a Poet’s Life, A Memoir (2006) and Liberation Narratives: New and Collected Poems, 1966-2009 (2009). Madhubuti is currently completing a new book, Poet: Honoring Genius, poems about his mentor, Gwendolyn Brooks, which will be available fall 2011.

            Professor Madhubuti is a proponent of independent Black institutions. He founded Third World Press in 1967. He is also a founder of the Institute of Positive Education/New Concept School (1969), and a cofounder of Betty Shabazz International Charter School (1998), Barbara A. Sizemore Middle School (2005), and DuSable Leadership Academy (2005), all of which are in Chicago.

He is an award-winning poet and recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, the American Book Award, an Illinois Arts Council Award, the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award and others. Professor Madhubuti is also a founder and chairman of the board of the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent. In 2006, he was awarded the Literary Legacy Award from the National Black Writers Conference for creating and supporting Black literature and for building Black literary institutions. He received his third honorary Doctor of Letters from Spelman College in May of 2006. In 2007, he was named “Chicagoan of the Year “by Chicago Magazine. In May 2008, Professor Madhubuti was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from Art Sanctuary of Philadelphia. In 2009, he was named one of the “Ebony Power 150: Most Influential Blacks in America” for education.  In 2010, he was presented with the President’s Pacesetters Award from the American Association of Blacks in Higher Education and was awarded the Ninth Annual Hurston/Wright Legacy Prize in poetry for his book Liberation Narratives. Two recent book-length critical studies on Madhubuti's literary works are Malcolm X and the Poetics of Haki Madhubuti by Regina Jennings and Art of Work: The Art and Life of Haki R. Madhubuti by Lita Hooper.

Madhubuti earned his MFA from the University of Iowa. His distinguished teaching career includes faculty positions at Columbia College of Chicago, Cornell University, University of Illinois at Chicago, Howard University, Morgan State University, and the University of Iowa. He is the former University Distinguished Professor and a professor of English at Chicago State University, where he founded and was director-emeritus of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center and director of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program. Professor Madhubuti served as the Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor at DePaul University for 2010–2011.

Joan Morgan

Joan Morgan is an award-winning journalist and author, and a provocative cultural critic. Morgan’s passion and commitment to the accurate documentation of hip-hop culture combined with adept cultural criticism placed her at the forefront of music journalism. She was one of the original staff writers at Vibe magazine and a contributing editor and columnist for Spin. Morgan has written for numerous publications, including MS., More, Interview, Working Mother, GIANT, and Essence magazines. In January 2000, she was asked to join the Essence staff, where she served as executive editor.

The term “hip-hop feminism” was coined by Morgan in 1999, when she published the groundbreaking book When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down. Her book has been used in college coursework across the country. Fresh, witty, and irreverent, it marked the literary debut of one of the most original, perceptive, and engaging young social commentators in America today. She has made numerous television and radio appearances—among them MTV, BET, VH1, and CNN. She was also featured in the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary Night in Vegas.

An engaging and entertaining speaker, Morgan focuses on the diverse realities of young women and men of the hip-hop generation, her career in music journalism, and how she became the foremother of hip-hop feminism. She is currently pursuing her doctorate in American Studies at New York University.

Uche Nduka

Uche Nduka—poet, photographer, spiritual activist—was born and raised in Nigeria. He has achieved a wide following as one of the most innovative poets of his generation. His published poetry books include eel on reef (2007); Flower Child (1988); Second Act (1994); The Bremen Poems (1995); Chiaroscuro, which won the Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Prize for 1997; If Only the Night (2002); Heart's Field (2005); and the e-book "Tracers," at http://wheelhousemagazine.com/chapbook/nduka.pdf.

Nduka's first prose book titled Belltime Letters appeared in 2000. Some of his writings have been translated into Dutch, French, German, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian. A new volume, Ijele, will be published in 2012. Nduka taught African literature for seven years at the University of Bremen, in Germany, where he was a doctoral student. He has given guest lectures and readings at universities, clubs, colleges, festivals, and other venues in Amsterdam, Benin City, Berlin, Bern, Bucharest, Cape Town, Cologne, Frankfurt, Hannover, Heidelberg, Ibadan, Ijebu-Igbo, Lagos, Leiden, London, New York City, Nsukka, Paderborn, Paris, and other places. He presently lives and works in New York City.

Shaun Neblett

Elizabeth Nunez

Elizabeth Nunez is the author of eight novels. Boundaries (Akashic Books, 2011), her most recent novel, was recently selected as a New York Times Editors’ Choice.  Anna In-Between (Akashic Books, 2009) received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. It was selected for the 2010 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for literary excellence. Nunez’s other novels include Prospero's Daughter, which was Trinidad and Tobago One Book, One Community selection;  New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, 2006 Florida Center for the Literary Arts One Book, One Community selection, and 2006 Novel of the Year for Black Issues Book Review); Bruised Hibiscus (American Book Award); Discretion (short-listed for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award); Grace; Beyond the Limbo Silence (Independent Publishers Book Award in multicultural fiction category); and When Rocks Dance.  Most of Nunez’s novels have also been published as audiobooks, and two are in translation, in Spanish and German. Nunez has also written several monographs of literary criticism published in scholarly journals and is coeditor of the anthology, Blue Latitudes: Caribbean Woman Writers at Home and Abroad. 

Nunez was cofounder of the National Black Writers Conference, which she directed for 18 years with grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Reed Foundation and the Nathan Cummings Foundation.  She chaired the PEN American Open Book committee, helping to launch the PEN Beyond Margins Award for writers of color. She was executive producer for the 2004 Emmy-nominated CUNY TV series Black Writers in America, aired on public television stations across the country.  Recently, she was awarded the 2011 Barnes & Noble Poets and Writers, Writers for Writers Award.  In 2012, Nunez will be among 12 writers, selected by the Folger Shakespeare Library and the PEN Faulkner Foundation, whose essays will appear in a chapbook celebrating the exhibition in Washington, D.C., on “Shakespeare’s Sisters.” 

Nunez is a member of several boards, including the Center for Fiction, CUNY TV, and Marian University. She is a judge for several national and international literary awards, and gives readings of her work across the country and abroad.  She is often keynote speaker at both academic and literary conferences. Currently, she conducts creative writing workshops for community residents in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.  Nunez received her PhD in English from New York University and is a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College, the City University of New York, where she teaches creative writing, fiction.

Nnedi Okorafor

Patrick Oliver

Patrick Oliver is founder and program manager for Say It Loud! Readers and Writers, a literary arts program dedicated to promoting reading and writing as tools of empowerment. Through a variety of innovative projects, Say It Loud! engages children, youth and adults in activities such as community forums, author talks, book discussions, and developmental workshops. Oliver currently resides in Los Angeles; Say It Loud! has programmatic partnerships in Baltimore, Maryland; Chicago, Illinois; Little Rock, Arkansas; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Washington, D.C.

Oliver is creator, executive producer, and host of Literary Nation Talk Radio, a live weekly broadcast that dialogues with authors, activist, and artist such as Sharon Draper, Marian Wright Edelman, Common, Nikki Grimes, Hill Harper, Sonia Sanchez, Susan L. Taylor, and numerous others.  On January 20, 2012, Oliver launched Literary Nation Live, a weekly live streamed television show from Inglewood, California.

He is publisher and editor of the Essence magazine best-selling anthology Turn the Page and You Don't Stop: Sharing Successful Chapters in Our Lives with Youth.  The anthology is a collection of essays, poems, short stories, photos, and testimonials from artist, activist, educators, and literary advocates acknowledging the transformative power of reading.

Oliver was director of sales and marketing at Third World Press (Chicago, Ill); program director for the Open Book Program, a citywide after-school reading program in Chicago; and spent more than 10 years as a senior contract administrator in the defense industry (Los Angeles, CA). He has organized and facilitated panels and workshops for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, American Library Association, the American Library Association Joint Conference of Librarians of Color Conference, Texas Library Association, College Language Association, Morehouse College, Ohio State University, Princeton University, Rutgers University, Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Caucus, Harlem Book Fair, and numerous other conferences and events. Oliver has made two appearances on C-SPAN BookTV (July 2007 and March 2010). He was literary consultant to economist and Bennett College President Dr. Julianne Malveaux, who published Surviving and Thriving: 365 Facts in Black Economic History. Surviving and Thriving,which was nominated for the 42th NAACP Image Award Outstanding Literary Work (nonfiction).

Additionally, Oliver developed in-school, after-school and summer enrichment programs for Cloverdale Middle Magnet School (Little Rock, Arkansas), William Penn School District (Lansdowne, Penn.), Open Book Program (Chicago), Pulaski Technical College (North Little Rock, Arkansas), City of Little Rock Community Programs Office and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Center for Diversity Affairs (Little Rock).

Laura Pegram

Darryl Pinckney

Darryl Pinckney, a frequent contributor to The New York Review of
Books, is the author of a novel, High Cotton, and, in the Alain Locke
Lecture Series, Out There: Mavericks of Black Literature. A
recipient of the Harold D. Vursell Award for Distinguished Prose from
the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a fellow at the Cullman
Center of the New York Public Library, Pinckney is at work on a collection of
essays concerning African-American literature in the twentieth century.

Kadija (George) Sesay

Kadija (George) Sesay is a literary activist, editor, and publisher of Sierra Leonean descent. She read West African studies at Birmingham University, and began her working career with STA Travel, managing their flagship store in London and then as their Africa specialist.  She became a freelance journalist, specializing in Black arts, Black British literature and women’s issues, combining her love of travel and writing to create the Sable Writer’s Hotspot in 1996, which has taken groups to The Gambia, Cuba, and New York (Egypt in 2013). She is currently setting up a social enterprise to build an artist and meditation retreat in The Gambia.
She is founder/publisher of Sable LitMag, Sable LitFest, and has coedited several anthologies of work by writers of African and Asian descent, including Dreams Miracles and Jazz: New Adventures in African Fiction (Picador Africa, 2008). She is the series editor for the Inscribe imprint (Peepal Tree Press). Their first anthology is Red: Contemporary Black British Poetry (2010). Other anthologies include Dance the Guns to Silence: 100 Poems for Ken Saro-Wiwa and IC3: The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain and Write Black, and Write British: From Post Colonial to Black British Literature.  She is also an associate editor for Callaloo and the editor of a new fiction imprint for Amalion Publishing in Senegal.
She has published her own poetry, short stories, essays, and articles in publications in the UK, USA, and Africa and been broadcast on BBC World Service. In 2011, she was awarded a place on the El Gouna Writer’s Residency in Egypt, where she spent a month writing then spent time travelling around the country. She is currently working on her first poetry collections Irki (which means “homeland” in the Nubian language) and Cultivating Calm

Kadija is the coeditor of Inscribe, a programme for professional development of writers of African and Asian descent in the UK. She has coordinated large-scale literary events, such as “Write Black, Write British,” a conference on Black British Writing at The Barbican in London and “Word from Africa” at the British Museum (2008).  She is the general secretary of African Writers Abroad (PEN) Centre, a fellow of the George Bell Institute and a Fellow of the Kennedy Arts Centre of Performance Arts Management.  She is an accredited coach (“Discover Your Future”), working primarily with artists. She has sat on several boards and committees for arts and educational organizations and received several awards for her work in the creative arts.

Dr. Michael Simanga

Dr. Michael Simanga is a multidiscipline artist, scholar, arts administrator, and activist.  He is director of the Fulton County Department of Arts and Culture, where he has produced and presented more than 200 cultural events, including plays, exhibitions, festivals, films, and concerts.  Simanga has an undergraduate degree in history and a doctorate in African-American studies.  He is the author of the critically acclaimed novel In the Shadow of the Son and his writing appears in several anthologies.  As a music producer, Simanga has worked with Grammy-winning singer Cassandra Wilson and poet Sonia Sanchez on her groundbreaking CD Full Moon of Sonia.  He is coeditor of the anthology 44 on 44: Forty-Four African American Writers on the Election of Barack Obama Forty-Fourth President of the USA (Fall 2011)

Tavis Smiley

From his celebrated conversations with world figures to his work to inspire the next generation of leaders; as a broadcaster, author, publisher, advocate, and philanthropist, Tavis Smiley continues to be an outstanding voice for change. Smiley is currently the host of the late-night television talk show Tavis Smiley on PBS and The Tavis Smiley Show from Public Radio International (PRI).  Alongside his abiding friend, Dr. Cornel West, Smiley is also cohost of the intellectually energetic radio program Smiley and West, also from PRI.

In 2010, Smiley left his studio chair in Los Angeles to go on the road with Tavis Smiley Reports, his primetime specials on PBS that examine some of the country’s most defining moments. The reports included going behind the scenes with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; examining one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s greatest speeches, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence”; traveling to the streets of New Orleans to mark Hurricane Katrina’s fifth anniversary; and a profile of renowned conductor Gustavo Dudamel.

In 2007, Smiley made television history as the moderator and executive producer of the All-American Presidential Forums on PBS, the first primetime television Democratic and Republican presidential debates with a panel exclusively comprised of journalists of color.

In addition to his radio and television work, Smiley has authored 15 books. His memoir, What I Know for Sure: My Story of Growing Up in America, became a New York Times best seller, and the book he edited, Covenant with Black America, became the first nonfiction book by a Black-owned publisher to reach No.1 on The New York Times’ best-seller list.

In his latest book, Fail Up: 20 Lessons on Building Success from Failure, Smiley steps from behind the curtain of success to recount 20 instances of perceived “failures” that were actually pivotal "life lessons." 

An avid reader committed to presenting America with stories from many different voices, Smiley founded SmileyBooks as a copublishing venture with Hay House, Inc. From established New York Times best-selling authors to exciting new voices, SmileyBooks covers topics that appeal to a broad spectrum of readers. SmileyBooks’ titles are published in hardcover, trade paperback, and digital media, offering the widest possible readership and exposure.

            Time magazine honored Smiley in 2009 as one of “The World’s 100 Most Influential People.” The annual Time 100 list profiles men and women whose power, talent, or moral example has made a significant difference in the world.In 2009, Smiley released Stand, his first documentary film, which he directed, wrote, and produced. Stand shares the experiences of Smiley and 10 Black male friends during a special road trip through Memphis and Nashville. The friends explore the impact of the civil rights movement and the role and relationships of Black men in America against the backdrop of the 2008 presidential race and the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.

Smiley is the presenter and creative force behind America I AM: The African American Imprint. This unprecedented traveling museum exhibition, which debuted in January 2009, will tour the country for four years, celebrating the extraordinary impact of African-American contributions to our nation and the world, as told through rare artifacts, memorabilia, and multimedia.

Smiley’s most gratifying accomplishments are rooted in his passion to inspire the next generation of leaders. The nonprofit Tavis Smiley Foundation was established

to provide leadership training and development for youth. Since its inception, more than 6,000 young people have participated in the foundation’s Youth to Leaders training workshops and conferences.
His communications company, The Smiley Group, Inc., is dedicated to supporting human rights and related empowerment issues and serves as the holding company for various enterprises encompassing broadcast and print media, lectures, symposiums, and the Internet.

Smiley’s achievements have earned him numerous awards and honorary doctorate degrees, including one from his alma mater, Indiana University. In 2009, Indiana

University named the atrium of its School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) building “The Tavis Smiley Atrium.” Smiley is also the recipient of the prestigious Du Bois Medal from Harvard University and the 2009 Interdependence Day Prize from Demos in Istanbul, Turkey.

This year, Smiley celebrates his 20th year in the broadcasting as he continues to inspire, educate, and inform in love and service.

Patricia Smith

Chicago native Patricia Smith is the author of six books of poetry, including Blood Dazzler, a book of poems chronicling the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, which was a 2008 National Book Award finalist and one of NPR's and the Library Journal's Top Books of 2008; and Teahouse of the Almighty, a National Poetry Series selection, winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the Paterson Poetry Prize. Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah will be published by Coffee House Press in the spring of 2012.

Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, Tin House and many other journals, and in both Best American Poetry 2011 and Best American Essays 2011. Smith has performed around the world, including Carnegie Hall, the Poets Stage in Stockholm, Rotterdam's Poetry International, the Aran Islands International Poetry and Prose Festival, the Bahia Festival, the Schomburg Center , the Sorbonne in Paris and on tour in Germany, Austria, and Holland. In addition to her poetry, Smith is also the author of the groundbreaking history Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery and the children's book Janna and the Kings, winner of a Lee & Low Books New Voices Award. She is a Pushcart Prize winner, a Cave Canem faculty member and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, the most successful poet in the competition's history. 

Smith is currently the editor of the anthologies Staten Island Noir and 100 Words and coeditor, with poet Tyehimba Jess, of the jazz poetry collection 21st Century Howlers. A dance/theater collaboration based on Blood Dazzler—choreographed by former Urban Bush Women dancer Paloma McGregor—recently debuted at the Harlem Stage in New York City and is being readied for future productions.

She is a professor at the City University of New York/College of Staten Island, and a faculty member of Cave Canem and the MFA programs of the University of Southern Maine and Sierra Nevada College.

Johnny Temple

Johnny Temple is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Akashic Books, an award-winning Brooklyn-based independent company dedicated to publishing urban literary fiction and political nonfiction. He is also the cofounder, with Akashic senior editor Ibrahim Ahmad, of Brooklyn Wordsmiths, an editorial and consulting company. Akashic has established its reputation by publishing cutting-edge literature from voices as diverse as Amiri Baraka, Bernice L. McFadden, Randall Robinson (on the Open Lens imprint), Nelson George, Elizabeth Nunez, Chris Abani, Kwame Dawes, Persia Walker, Colin Channer, Preston L. Allen, Kola Boof, and many others. Temple won the American Association of Publishers' 2005 Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing; and the 2010 Jay and Dean Kogan Award for Excellence in Noir Literature. Temple plays bass guitar in the band Girls Against Boys, which has toured extensively across the globe and released numerous albums on independent and major record companies. He has contributed articles and political essays to various publications, including The Nation, Publishers Weekly, AlterNet, Poets & Writers, and BookForum. He is also the chair of the Brooklyn Literary Council, which works with Brooklyn's borough president to plan the annual Brooklyn Book Festival in September. He studied Caribbean and African American literature at Wesleyan University and received a master's degree in social work (M.S.W.) from Columbia University in 1993. He was born and raised in Washington, D.C., and currently resides with his wife, Kara Gilmour, and their two boys in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

Lori L. Tharps

Lori L. Tharps is an assistant professor of journalism at Temple University. She is also the author of two critically acclaimed nonfiction titles, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America and Kinky Gazpacho: Life, Love & Spain. Both The Washington Post and Salon.comnamed Kinky Gazpacho one of the Best Books of 2008. Tharps's debut novel, Substitute Me, was published in 2010.

Tharps continues to write magazine articles for publications such as Glamour, Ms., Vogue Black, Uptown and Grid Philadelphia. She is the founder of the blog MyAmericanMeltingpot.com, which documents diversity around the globe. For more information about Tharps, please visit LoriTharps.com.

Cheryl Wills

Cheryl Wills is a nationally recognized award-winning anchor for Time Warner Cable’s flagship cable news network, New York 1 News, which is on cable systems throughout the United States. Wills, who has been with the news channel since its launch in 1992, is one of the station’s most recognizable journalists for breaking news and special coverage.

            Wills wears many hats.  She is the author of Die Free: A Heroic Family Tale, which was released by Bascom Hill Press in January 2011.  On March 25, 2011, she was invited to speak before the General Assembly of the United Nations about the impact of slavery on her family during the UN’s International Remembrance of Victims of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.  Wills also takes great pride in being the Founder and Commander of the New York Chapter of the Sons & Daughters of the United States Colored Troops, a national organization based in Washington, D.C.  With that platform, she raises awareness about the contributions of the 200,000 black soldiers who valiantly fought during The Civil War and teaches youngsters about The Civil War era.

            As anchor and reporter for New York 1 News, which is based in New York City, Cheryl Wills has been a reliable guide through everything from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, to moderating televised discussions about the presidency of Barack Obama. Along the way, Wills has picked up New York Press Club and AP Awards for her reporting.

            Wills has received numerous awards for her reporting, including the YMCA National Black Achievers in Industry Award, the Carl T. Rowan Leadership in Media Award during the 25th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Awards.  In 2010, McDonald’s honored her as a broadcasting legend during a regional ad campaign that was featured in their restaurants.  In recognition of her career, she received an honorary doctorate degree from New York College of Health Professions in May 2005.

            Cheryl Wills has also played herself in a number of major motion pictures, including Freedomland starring Samuel L. Jackson and The Brave One with Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard.  She was also featured prominently in a Panasonic Commercial that was broadcast globally.  She also plays herself in an episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”

            Wills is a graduate of the famed S.I. Newhouse School at Syracuse University and is an active member of The Links, Inc., The Inner Circle of City Hall Journalists, The National Association of Black Journalists, The New York Press Club and The Screen Actors Guild.

            Wills's roots in the United States military run deep.  Her father, Clarence Wills, served honorably during the Vietnam era and her maternal grandfather, Hardy Ford, served during World War I in a segregated unit overseas.  Her great-great-great grandfather, Sandy Wills, was a private in the United States Colored Troops during the Civil War.  Her father was also among the first wave of Black firefighters to integrate the oldest engine company in New York—Engine 1, Ladder 24.

Tiphanie Yanique

Tiphanie Yanique is fiction writer, poet, and essayist.  She is the author of How to Escape from a Leper Colony (Graywolf Press, 2010).  Her writing has won the Boston Review Prize in Fiction, The Kore Press Chapbook Prize, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, a Fulbright Scholarship, and an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her work can be found in The Journal of Caribbean Literature, The Best African American Fiction, Story Quarterly, American Short Fiction, Transition Magazine, and other prestigious journals.  Yanique has been listed by The Boston Globe as one of the 16 cultural figures to watch out for and by the National Book Foundation as one of the 2010 “5 Under 35,” a list announcing the next generation of fiction writers.  This year, she joined Derek Walcott and Edwidge Danticat as one of the genre winners of the 2011 BOCAS prize in Caribbean Literature.  Tiphanie Yanique is from the Virgin Islands and she currently lives between St. Thomas and Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, the photographer and teacher Moses Djeli, and their son.  She is an assistant professor in the MFA program at the New School.