Evie Shockley, Zora Neale Hurston Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, is the author of Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry and six collections of poetry -- most recently, suddenly we, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her critical essays have appeared in The Black Scholar, New Literary History, Callaloo, The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry, The New Emily Dickinson Studies, and elsewhere. Additional honors include the Shelley Memorial Award, the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, and the Stephen Henderson Award. Shockley serves as an Editor at Contemporary Literature and is at work on a critical project tentatively titled Black Graphics: Colorblindness and the Survival of Black Being.