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.

Ep 4 DuEwa interviewed Victoria Moten about her new chapter, "Mother(ship) Intuition: Black Women Protagonists in Afrofuturism" from the new edited volume Introduction to Afrofuturism: A Mixtape in Black Literature & Arts edited by DuEwa M. Frazier, published by Routledge (August 2024).

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BIO

Victoria Moten is a Professional Track faculty member at the University of Maryland, Department of English. She is a doctoral student in the English Department at Howard University with a major focus in African American Literature and a minor focus in Women’s Studies. She received her M.A. in Language in Literature at Clark Atlanta University completing her thesis on the works of James Baldwin. Victoria’s research interests lie in the speculative fiction works of Black women writers, from Hurston to Butler, and what their prose presents about the importance of the human connection to nature–particularly the connection to place. She’s presented on panels at the National Council for Black Studies, College English Association, and the American University in Paris James Baldwin Conference on this subject. Her writing on this subject can be found in Introduction to Afrofuturism: A Mixtape in Black Literature & Arts (Routledge 2024). A Hurston/Wright Fellow, her creative writing ranges from poetry to short fiction; from biographical to speculative, and can be found in the Obsidian, Maryland Bards Poetry Review and Black Freighter Press. Victoria teaches Black Diaspora Literature and Culture (CMLT235) and Academic Writing (ENGL101) at the University of Maryland. She has also served as senior researcher for Buried Blueprints of Black Education: Reconstruction to Deconstruction through Digital Storytelling, NEH Humanities Initiatives for HBCUs well as a content developer, North Star Outreach Program, Smithsonian Institute National Museum of African American History & Culture. Her areas of interest include 20th Century African American Literature, Black Diaspora Literature, Women’s Studies, and creative writing.

Ep 7 DuEwa interviewed Elizabeth C. Hamilton about her book Charting the Afrofuturist Imaginary in African American Art.

BioElizabeth Hamilton, Ph.D. is an assistant professor at Fort Valley State University and art historian whose research focuses on visual culture of the African diaspora, feminism, and Afrofuturism. Her first book is Charting the Afrofuturist Imaginary in African American Art (Routledge), which is the winner of the Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant. Dr. Hamilton has published research in Nka: The Journal of Contemporary African Art, African Arts, the International Review of African American Art, Harper's Bazaar, Smithsonian Voices, CAA Reviews, and SmartHistory. Dr. Hamilton was awarded funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) to work on her next book, Figuring It Out: Black Womanhood through the Figurative in the Oeuvre of Alison Saar.

Ep 6 DuEwa interviewed Ayana T. Hardaway about her new chapter titled, "Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Exploring Endarkened Afrofuturist Feminism & Shapeshifting in Octavia E. Butler’s Wild Seed" which features in the new edited volume, Introduction to Afrofuturism: A Mixtape in Black Literature & Arts edited by DuEwa M. Frazier , published by Routledge. Pick up your copy of this new work at http://www.Routledge.com or wherever books are sold.

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BIO

Dr. Ayana Tyler Hardaway is the Founder and CEO of Wildflowers & Co. Publishing, a passionate storyteller, creative, and independent critical qualitative Black feminist scholar dedicated to amplifying the voices of Black women and girls. She combines her scholarship, Black speculative art, and creativity to challenge dominant narratives and reclaim ancestral truths. Her research delves into the experiences of Black women and girls in educational research, Black feminisms, critical qualitative inquiry, Black speculative methodologies, and the impact of structural oppression—particularly white supremacy and patriarchal systems within higher education. As a critical theorist, Ayana is committed to bridging theory and practice by amplifying marginalized voices and fostering justice, equity, and healing through her work. Whether in academia or the community, her mission is to create spaces where storytelling leads to liberation and empowerment for all. Her work has been published in the College Student Affairs Journal, the Journal of Postsecondary Student Success, the Journal of African American Women and Girls in Education, and Investing in the Educational Success of Black Women and Girls.

Ep 5 ⁠DuEwa ⁠interviewed Dr. ⁠Shernā Ann Phillips ⁠about her new book chapter, "In The Afro-Future, Even Jezebels Like ‘Yo-Yo’ Deserve to Be Saved: An Exploration of Black Female Characters in They Cloned Tyrone (2023)" featured in the new edited volume Introduction to Afrofuturism: A Mixtape in Black Literature & Arts edited by DuEwa Frazier, published by Routledge. Visit Routledge.com to learn more about this book and purchase your own copy of ⁠Introduction to Afrofuturism: A Mixtape in Black Literature & Arts.

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Bio

Shernā Ann Phillips, Ph.D. ("Dr. Nae" for short) is an Atlanta-based writer and performer whose work is heavily influenced by her upbringing in Baltimore. She teaches English at Spelman College, writes and produces plays for the stage and screen, and prides herself as an ARTivist whose art and research explore the intersectionality of gender with race, age, culture, sexuality, religion and class. A screenwriter, her first feature-length script, Induction, placed in the Top 15% in the 2017 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. Nicholl readers said the script was "One of the most enjoyable family dramedy road trips I’ve ever been on" and "The dialogue is a real delight: salty, naturalistic and often hilariously funny, in a dry way." As a playwright, she has written and produced several full-length stage plays, including The Cosby Satires and Double X: A Choreopoem for Womxn of All Flavors (formerly titled The XX Chromosome Project and cited on ⁠Wikipedia under the choreopoem entry⁠). She is a proud board member at Strand Theater Company, Baltimore’s only women-centric theater devoted solely to promoting women’s voices on the stage.

Ep 3 DuEwa Interviewed scholar Jeremy Laughery about their book chapter, "It’s Not What I See, But What I See Through”: Queer Afrofuturism and Afrosurrealism in Neptune Frost (2021).Read Jeremy's chapter and learn more about the new volume Introduction to Afrofuturism: A Mixtape in Black Literature & Arts Edited by DuEwa Frazier and purchase this book at Routledge.com or wherever books are sold >>>Introduction to Afrofuturism: A Mixtape in Black Literature & Arts - 1

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BIO

Jeremy Laughery (he/they) is a first-year MA in Film Studies student at the University of Iowa, where he also teaches introductory Rhetoric courses in the Department of Rhetoric. His research interests are varied, ranging from an interest in the intersection between Afrospeculation and filmic genre conventions to the ontological nature and narrative function of the found footage and mockumentary formats in the horror film genre. His most recent book chapter on Afrospeculation, queer embodiment, and political resistance in Neptune Frost is included in the new volume Introduction to Afrofuturism: A Mixtape in Black Literature & Arts (Routledge).