Formerly Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia, Jeffery Renard Allen is the author of five books, most recently the novel Song of the Shank, which is loosely based on the life of Blind Tom, a nineteenth century African American piano virtuoso and composer. Allen has received numerous accolades for his work, including The Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for Fiction, The Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, a grant in Innovative Literature from Creative Capital, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a Bellagio Residency. His collection of stories, Fat Time, will be published in 2020. He lives in Johannesburg.
Irvin Weathersby
Irvin Weathersby is a Brooklyn-based writer and professor of literature and creative writing from New Orleans. He has published three biographies in Notable Black American Men,
