Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is an accomplished American author and poet, best known for her nuanced explorations of culture, religion, race, and family in her work. She was born in 1967 and grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and Atlanta, Georgia. Jeffers launched her literary career with the publication of her first book, "The Gospel of Barbecue," in 2000, which won the Stan and Tom Wick poetry prize and was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry prize in 2001.

Jeffers' poetry has been widely anthologized and featured in numerous prestigious literary journals, including the American Poetry Review, Callaloo, the Iowa Review, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner. She has also published fiction in respected literary magazines such as the Indiana Review, the Kenyon Review, the New England Review, and Story Quarterly. Her poetry collections have earned her numerous awards, including honors from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women.

In addition to her poetry and fiction, Jeffers is an accomplished essayist, and her work has appeared in various publications, including Common-Place: The Journal of Early American Life, The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, and Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry. Her poetry collection, "The Age of Phillis," was published in 2020 and is based on fifteen years of research on the life and times of Phillis Wheatley (Peters), a formerly enslaved person who was the first African American woman to publish a book.

Jeffers is a Professor of English at the University of Oklahoma, where she teaches creative writing, and has received several prestigious awards, including the Harper Lee Award for Literary Distinction and induction into the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame. Her highly anticipated debut novel, "The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois," is set to be published by Harper in July 2021.