NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness

ISSN: 1543-0855

Issue 6 (2007)

Tara Betts teaches creative writing at Rutgers University. Her work appears in numerous anthologies and journals. She's also written for Callaloo, Black Issues Book Review, The Source and XXL.

Carole Boyce Davies is Professor of English and African-New World Studies at Florida International University. Recruited to build the African-New World Studies Program at FIU, she served as its director for nine years, moving the program to international recognition. She has held distinguished professorships at a number of institutions, including the Herskovits Professor of African Studies and Professor of Comparative Literary Studies and African American Studies at Northwestern University. She is author of numerous monographs, edited books, and articles, Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject (1994), Left of Karl Marx. Claudia Jones, Black/Communist/Woman (2007), Ngambika. Studies of Women in African Literature (1986); Out of the Kumbla. Caribbean Women and Literature (1990); the two-volume Moving Beyond Boundaries (1995), and Decolonizing the Academy. African Diaspora Studies (Africa World Press, 2003). She is co-editor with Isidore Okpewho and Ali Mazrui of The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities (Indiana University Press, 1999) as well as the general editor of a 2-volume The Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora (forthcoming, 2008). Currently, Dr. Boyce Davies is writing a series of personal reflections called Caribbean Spaces. Between the Twilight Zone and the Underground Railroad, dealing with the issue of transnational Caribbean/American black identity, and is preparing an edition of the writings of Claudia Jones, Beyond Containment: Claudia Jones, Activism, Clarity and Vision.

Jane Alberdeston Coralin is a poet and writer. Her work can be seen in a variety of literary anthologies and journals. In 2006, Penguin/New American Library released Sister Chicas, a novel Jane co-authored with two friends and fellow Latinas. She recently completed her doctoral studies in English literature at Binghamton University in upstate New York. She is a proud alumna of Cave Canem, an organization for writers of African descent.

Boubacar Boris Diop is widely recognized, internationally, as one of the most influential writers and public scholars of his generation. A highly celebrated novelist, journalist and screen-writer, Diop is the author of prize-winning novels and screen plays. Among his singular accomplishments, Diop founded Le Sul, the first independent newspaper in Senegal; and, secured a unique place in African literary history with the publication of his Doomi Golo (2003), his first African language novel written in Wolof. In essays and public scholarship, Boris Diop engages compelling debates about issues of French racism, African immigration, genocide, neocolonialism, and the complexities and complications of the educated elite world wide. Négrophobie (2005), a collection of essays by Diop, Odile Tobner and Francois-Xavier Verschave is in its second printing. Boris Diop’s most recent novel is Kaveena (2006). The prize-winning film script Ndeysaan: Le Prix du Pardon (The Price of Pardon) is but one of Diop’s accomplishments in African cinema. He is perhaps best known for his highly acclaimed novel on the Rwanda Genocide, Murambi: le livre des ossements (2000). The English translation, Murambi: The Book of Bones, was published by Indiana University Press in 2006. His most recent collection of essays is L’Afrique au-delà du miroir (Philippe Rey, 2007).

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a Cave Canem Fellow and received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and her MA in English Literature from the University of Delaware. Her work and art has appeared in Callaloo, Puerto Del Sol, Inkwell, PMS: poem memoir story, TORCH, Saranac Review, Black Arts Quarterly, Sable LitMag, Lumina, and many others. She lives in New York.

Amari Chris Johnson is a child of Africa and its Diaspora, whose work and life revolves around the health and well-being of global African peoples.

Acklyn Lynch is an Emeritus Professor of African American Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He has also taught at Howard University, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), Univeristy of Massachusetts (Amherst), Vassar College and Medgar Evers College. He has travelled extensively with Max Roach, Archie Shepp and Dizzy Gillepsie. And he has organized major Black Studies conferences, international art exhibitions as well as vital cultural/community events at his current residence in Washington, DC.

John H. McClendon III is Director of African American and African Studies and Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Michigan State University. McClendon's areas of expertise include African philosophy, Philosophy of African American Studies, Marxist philosophy, and the history of African American philosophers. McClendon is the Editor of the American Philosophical Association Newsletter Philosophy and the Black Experience and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of the journal Cultural Logic. He is author of C.L.R. James's Notes on Dialectics: Left Hegelianism or Marxism-Leninism (Lexington Books 2005) and currently finishing a book, Marxism in Ebony: Left and Right versus Black and White.

Dax-Devlon Ross is the author of four books including Beat of a Different Drum: The Untold Stories of African-Americans Forging their Own Paths in Work and Life and a novel, The Best of Intentions. He is the co-founder of Outside the Box Publishing and the editor of “The HNIC Report,” a blog that covers art, politics and culture from a radically independent perspective. View more of his work at www.daxdevlonross.com

Metta Sáma lives in New York and Indiana where she writes and teaches.

Sharisse M. Stancil-Ashford is a poet, an artist, and a student at Syracuse University.

Noelle Théard is a social documentary photographer, currently pursuing a Masters in African New World Studies from Florida International University. She received a BA in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin, and she studied photography in Paris at the Spéos Photography Institute with an internship at the Knight-Ridder news corporation and the Cannes Film Festival. Her work has been exhibited in Miami, New York, Philadelphia, and Houston, and her series “To the Barbershop” is part of the Miami Dade Public Library’s permanent collection. Her freelance clients include The Miami Herald, Greenpeace, DJ News, Six Degrees Records, and Urban America Newspaper. View her works at www.noelletheard.com

Aza Amina Zhenga a.k.a donnamariasmith is the poet/author/entrepreneur/daughter/sister/friend who hails from the low-country of South Carolina. Currently living in Washington, DC, Aza Donna is a Gullah/Geechie girl with a lost accent, who is claiming her power as a fifth generation African born in America. She weaves words the way her grandparents weaved Sweetgrass baskets, and combines her career and life experiences to captivate, enlighten, and inspire with her poignant style. She is a graduate of Clemson University’s School of Engineering, the author of Self Acceptance, and has written two additional collections of poetry to be published in the near future. She is the CEO of LivingPoetryInk!, a company by artists for artists; and owner of PowerConnects, a telecom brokerage and marketing company.

Citation Format:

------. “Notes on Contributors,” PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness: Issue 6, 2007