Photo Credit: Lauren Desberg
I am a poet, writer, cartoonist, and scholar. In both my creative and scholarly work, I explore the themes of agency and pleasure in the lives of black women and girls. My current research focuses on black feminist engagement with sex-positivity through the work of three under-explored writers of the 1970s and 80s. My public facing work has appeared in places like Boston Review, Zora, Glamour, Lit Hub, The Lily, the New Yorker, and elsewhere. I am the recipient fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, Cave Canem Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, and the African American Intellectual History Society. My chapbook, Ratchet Supreme, was selected by poet Tiana Clark as the winner of the 2019 BOAAT Chapbook Prize.
Currently, I am an assistant professor in the English department at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. My research interests include: black feminism(s), 20th century African American literature, comics/the graphic novel, black music, and black sexual politics. I am the founder of the Black Women in Jazz Oral History, a project that seeks to contribute to the development of a new wave of jazz poetry, community engaged work, and scholarship that centers black women. When not writing or in the classroom, I perform across New York City as one half of the GET FREE COLLECTIVE, a band formed by myself and acclaimed drummer, Jerome Jennings.