Education

• Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh
• M.A., University of Pittsburgh
• B.A., Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Interests

• African American Literature
• Poetry
• Rhetoric and Composition
• Literary Theory
• Black Historical Fiction
• Black Feminist Literary Criticism
• Slave Narratives

Selected Grants, Honors, and Workshops

• National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute in Contemporary African American Literature. Pennsylvania State University, 2012.
• Cave Canem Poetry Workshop in Received Forms. Led by Marilyn Nelson. Adelphi University, 2009.
• Callaloo Poetry Workshop, Texas A&M University, 2005.
• Cave Canem Poetry Fellow, 1997-99

Selected Publications (Critical Essays and Reviews)

Review of The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States, eds. Miriam Jiminez Roman and Juan Flores. MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States 38.1 (Spring 2013): 171-173. Co-authored with Erin Hurt.

"The High Cost of Freedom: The Strategic Use of Memory and Voice in Lorene Cary's The Price of a Child." In Reclaiming Home, Remembering Motherhood, Rewriting History: African American and Afro-Caribbean Women's Literature in the Twentieth Century. Eds. Verena Thiele and Marie Drews. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, July 2009.

"Claiming Joy and Naming Sorrow: Exploring the Connections Between Womanly Truths and Feminist Practice in Lucille Clifton's Poetry." The Langston Hughes Review 22 (Fall 2008): 19-26.

"Sexual Subversions/Political Inversions: Women's Poetry and the Politics of the Black Arts Movement." New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement. Eds. Margo Crawford and Lisa Collins. Rutgers University Press, 2006.

"'But Could a Dream Send Up Through Onion Fumes': The Intersections of Race, Gender, and Class in Gwendolyn Brooks' A Street in Bronzeville." EAPSU Online Proceedings, 2004.

"Self-Evident Truths: Love, Complicity, and Critique in Barbara Chase-Riboud's Sally Hemmings and The President's Daughter." In Monuments of the Black Atlantic: Slavery and Memory. Eds. Joanne M. Braxton and Maria Diedrich. Book 13 in the Forecaast series. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2004.

"Reader's Guide." Barbara Chase-Riboud's Sally Hemings: A Novel. Chicago Review Press, 2009.

"Reader's Guide." Barbara Chase-Riboud's The President's Daughter: A Novel. Chicago Review Press, 2009.

"Audre Lorde." Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender. Ed. Fedwa Malti-Douglas. Thompson/Gale Publishers, 2007.

Selected Publications (Poetry)

"The Kidney." The Healing Muse 13.1 (Fall 2013).

"That’s Right"; "Diversion"; and "Old Maid's Rules." Affilia: The Journal of Women in Social Work 27.4 (November 2012): 449-450.

"Sweetness and the Light Girl, 1938"; "Steel Will,1942"; and "Leaving Bethlehem Steel, 1947." Connotations Press, February 2011.

"Returns"; and "Child, Leaving." PMS: Poem Memoir Story 8 (2008).

"Criminal Family." African American Review 37.4 (Winter 2003): 644.

"C'mon"; "Call and Response"; and "whateva you do." Poems published in various Cave Canem Anthologies, 1997-2001.

"Cherry-baby"; "Parenthood"; and "Holding." 5AM Magazine 13 (August 2000).