About the Author

John Alfred Williams (1925–2015) was an African American author, journalist, and professor of English at Rutgers University. He won the American Book Awards Lifetime Achievement award in 2011. 

Ishmael Reed is the author of numerous books, including the celebrated novels Flight to Canada and Mumbo Jumbo. For thirty-five years he taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and lives in Oakland, California.

Merve Emre is a contributing writer at The New Yorker and an associate professor of English at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America, among other works.