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Herman Beavers, Lorene Cary, Maryse Condé, Joan Dayan, Samuel R. Delany, Farah Griffin, Gloria Naylor and Ishmael Reed
Herman Beavers
is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. His teaching and scholarly interests include 19th and 20th Century African American Literature, Narrative Theory, Constructions of Masculinity in African American Literature and Culture. He is the author of Wrestling Angels into Song: The Fictions of Ernest J. Gaines and James Alan McPherson, which was published in 1995 by the University of Pennsylvania Press as well as a chap-book of poems, A Neighborhood of Feeling (1986) and his poems have appeared in Black American Literature Forum, Whiskey Island, Rain, Cave Canem I and II, Dark Phrases, and the Cincinnati Poetry Review.
Lorene Cary
is an acclaimed author and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the founder of Art Sanctuary, a non-profit lecture and performance series that brings thinkers and artists of the African diaspora to speak and perform at the Church of the Advocate located in Philadelphia. She is the author of Pride (1998); The Price of A Child (Knopf, 1995; 1996); and her first book, Black Ice (1991), a memoir of her years first as a black female student, and then teacher, at St. Paul's, an exclusive New England boarding school. Black Ice was chosen as a Notable Book for 1992 by the American Library Association.
Maryse Condé
playwright, critic and teacher was born in Guadeloupe in the French Caribbean. She studied at the Université de Paris III (Sorbonne Nouvelle), where she took her doctorate in Comparative Literature (1975). It was not until her third novel, Segu-I, Les Murailes de Terre II, La Terre Miettes (1984), that she established herself among contemporary Caribbean writers. She has published ten novels while maintaining an academic career and is the author of Heremakhoon (1976); A Reason in Rhihata (1981), Segu (1984), I, Tatuba, Black Witch of Salem (1986), Tree of Life (1987), Crossing the Mangrove (1989), The Last African Kings (1992), and Windward Heights (2000). She is now the Chair of the Center for Francophone and French Studies at Columbia University. Maryse Condé's novels have been translated into English, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese.
Joan Dayan
is a Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Dayan teaches courses in Caribbean studies, 19th century American, French and English literary history; and the comparative legal and religious history of the Americas. Her books include A Rainbow for the Christian West (University of Massachusetts Press), Fables of Mind: An Inquiry into Poe's Fiction (Oxford University Press), and Haiti, History, and the Gods (University of California Press). She is currently completing Held in the Body of the State (Princeton University Press) and The Law is a White Dog (which sometimes appears as Ezekiel's Bones), a series of stories on the mechanisms of the law, spiritual belief, and the supernatural.
Samuel R. Delany
is a critic and novelist, with essays and interviews collected in seven volumes. He has written his highly acclaimed autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water (1988) and the best-selling Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1998), and among his fiction, The Mad Men (1995), Atlantis: Three Tales (1993), and Dhalgren (1975). Within the next year, some of his early science fiction, Babel-17 and Empire Star (both 1966); Nova(1968) and Driftglass (collected stories, 1970)- will be reissued. He is a multiple winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for science fiction. He has also received the Pilgrim Award for outstanding scholarship in the field of science fiction studies, and the William Whitehead Memorial Award for a lifetime's contribution to Lesbian and Gay literature. Mr. Delany is currently a professor of English and Creative Writing at Temple University.
Farah Griffin
is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African American Studies at Columbia University. While at the University of Pennsylvania (1994-2000) Griffin was the recipient of the prestigious Trustees Council of Penn Women award in recognition of her achievements that have brought change in the academy and the University. Griffin has also written, Who Set You Flowin'?: The African American Migration Narrative (1995), and Stranger in the Village: Two Centuries of African American Travel Writing (co-edited with Cheryl Fish, 1998) and Beloved Sisters, Loving Friends: Letters From Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus (2000), which was nominated for the 2000 NAACP Image Award for Best Literary Work in Non-Fiction. Her articles and essays have been published in the New York Times, Callaloo, Black American Literature Forum, Modern Language Association and Harper's Bazaar. Griffin's latest work is If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery: in Search of Billie Holiday (2001).
Gloria Naylor
wordsmith and storyteller, weaves her personal life and familial past into her novels. She is the author of five novels, including, The Women of Brewster Place (1982), Linden Hills (1985), Mama Day (1988), Bailey's Café (1992), and The Men of Brewster Place (1998). She is also the editor of The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, Vol. II (1996). Ms. Naylor is the recipient of several awards including the National Book Award, the American Book Award, the Candace Award and the Guggenheim Fellowship.
Ishmael Reed
is currently a lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley. After founding many institutions like Konch Magazine in 1990, Reed has been inducted into the National Literary Hall of Fame of Writers of African Decent. Since the publication of his first novel, The Free-Lance Pallbearers (1967), Reed has devoted himself to the production of a substantial body of literature - fiction, poetry and essays including The Terrible Twos (1982); Japanese by Spring (1993); The Terrible Threes (1989); Flight To Canada (1976), and Mumbo Jumbo (1972). Mumbo Jumbo (1972) was the work that first achieved wide notoriety for the author, and it is considered by several scholars to be his best, along with Flight to Canada (1976). Two of Reed's books have been nominated for National Book Awards, and he has received numerous honors, fellowships, and prizes, including the Lewis H. Michaux Literary Prize, awarded to him in 1978 by the Studio Museum in Harlem.
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