Ep. 10 DuEwa interviewed writer Jeffery Renard Allen about his writing life and his essay "My Life in The New Wave: On My Origins as A Black Fabulist" which features in the new edited volume, Introduction to Afrofuturism: A Mixtape in Black Literature & Arts edited by DuEwa M. Frazier, published by Routledge. Visit JefferyRenardAllen.com.

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BIOJeffery Renard Allen is the award-winning author of six books of fiction and poetry, including the celebrated novel Song of the Shank, which was a front-page review in both The New York Times Book Review and The San Francisco Chronicle. Allen’s other accolades include The Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for Fiction, The Chicago Public Library’s Twenty-First Century Award, the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, a grant in Innovative Literature from Creative Capital, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, residencies at the Bellagio Center, U Cross, and Jentel Arts, and fellowships at The Center for Scholars and Writers, the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Studies, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Allen is the founder and editor of Taint Taint Taint magazine and is the Africa Editor for The Evergreen Review. His latest books are the short story collection Fat Time and the memoir An Unspeakable Hope, which he co-authored with Leon Ford. A native Chicagoan making his homes Charlottesville, Virginia, and Johannesburg, South Africa, Allen is at work on his memoir Mother-Wit. Read an excerpt published in Granta.

Ep. 9 DuEwa interviewed Ran Walker about his chapter of microfiction in the edited volume Introduction to Afrofuturism: A Mixtape in Black Literature & Arts (Routledge) edited by DuEwa Frazier. Visit www.ranwalker.com.

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Bio Ran Walker is the author of over 30 books. His short stories, flash fiction, microfiction, and poetry have appeared in a variety of anthologies and journals. Prior to becoming a writer and educator, he worked in magazine publishing and practiced law in Mississippi. He is the winner of the Indie Author Project's 2019 National Indie Author of the Year Award, the 2019 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Best Fiction Ebook Award, the 2018 Virginia Indie Author Project Award for Adult Fiction, and the 2021 Blind Corner Afrofuturism Microfiction Contest. His collection Keep It 100: 100-Word Stories was selected by Kojo Baffoe for South Africa's Sunday Times' Best Reads of 2021. Ran is also the recipient of both a 2005 Mississippi Arts Commission/NEA artist grant and a 2006 artist mini-grant. He served as an Artist-in-Residence with the Mississippi Arts Commission in 2006. Additionally, he is a past participant in the Hurston-Wright Writers Week Workshop and is the recipient of a fellowship from the Callaloo Writers Workshop. Since October of 2019, he has been writing microfiction exclusively. He has been featured in Library Journal and Publishers Weekly and at the Library Journal Day of Dialog in October 2019. He has served as a judge for several regional, national, and international contests, and he also regularly writes for Writer's Digest magazine, where he serves as a Contributing Editor.

Ep 8 DuEwa interviewed Alan King about his fiction chapter, "Cornbread Othello" from the volume, Introduction to Afrofuturism: A Mixtape in Black Literature & Arts (Routledge) edited by DuEwa Frazier. Alan also discussed his writing life and current projects. Visit www.alanwking.com.

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Bio

Alan King is a Caribbean American poet, whose parents emigrated to the U.S. from Trinidad and Tobago in the early '70s. He's a father, husband, and author of two collections of poetry: Point Blank (Silver Birch Press, 2016) and Drift (Aquarius Press, 2012). King's poetry caught the attention of U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo who said: "Alan King is one of my favorite up-and-coming poets of his generation. His poems are not pop and flash, rather more like a slow dance with someone you're going to love forever." King is also a videographer and motion graphics artist. The video he produced for his poem, "Gluttony," was an "Official Selection" of the 2021 International Video Poetry Festival in Athens, Greece. A Cave Canem graduate fellow, King is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine. He lives with his wife, children, and mother-in-law in Bowie, MD.