About

For over a decade, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers has been lifting her voice on the issues of black women in literature, African American culture, and American society. She is the author of three award-winning books of poetry, The Gospel of Barbecue, Outlandish Blues, and Red Clay Suite, and she is a fiction writer as well.  Her poems and stories have appeared in literary journals such as African American Review, American Poetry Review, Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz and Literature, Callaloo, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and Story Quarterly; in over a dozen anthologies; and a story of hers was cited as one of the “100 More Distinguished Stories of 2008″ in Best American Short Stories 2009. She has won awards from the Rona Jaffe Foundation and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts,  American Antiquarian Society, the MacDowell Colony and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. She teaches creative writing at the University of Oklahoma, where she is Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing Coordinator.

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[Honorée's Brief Curriculum Vitae]

EDUCATION

M.F.A. in Creative Writing, University of Alabama, 1996

B.A. in English literature, Talladega College, 1989

RECENT EXPERIENCE

2007-present Associate Professor of English, The University of Oklahoma

2002-2007 Assistant Professor of English, The University of Oklahoma

HONORS/AWARDS/FELLOWSHIPS

2011

Fellowship in Poetry, National Endowment for the Arts

2010

Kay Evans Fellowship in Poetry, Vermont Studio Center
Runner-up in Fiction, The Bevel Summers Award for Best of Issue, Shenandoah 60/1-2
Honorable Mention, Georgetown Review Poetry Contest

2009

Robert and Charlotte Baron Foundation Fellowship, American Antiquarian Society
“100 More Distinguished Stories of 2008,” Best American Short Stories of 2009

2008

Paterson Award for Literary Excellence

2007

Tennessee Williams Fiction Scholarship, Sewanee Writers Conference
Finalist, Mary McCarthy Prize for Fiction, Sarabande Books

2006

Second Prize, Crab Orchard Open Competition, Dorianne Laux, Judge

2005

Honorable Mention, Zoetrope All-Story Fiction Contest, Robert Olen Butler, Judge
Special Mention in The Pushcart Prize XXIX: Best of the Small Presses

PUBLICATIONS

EDITED

Guest-edited Journals

PMS: Poetry/Memoir/Story: The Black Women’s Issue. (Issue #8/2008)

POETRY
Books

Red Clay Suite. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007.

Outlandish Blues. Middleton: Wesleyan University Press, 2003.

The Gospel of Barbecue. Kent/London: Kent State University Press, 2000.

Journals

“ab initio,” “Blues: Contemporary American Poetry,” “The Beautiful and the Sublime,” and “La Négresse.” Cavalier Literary Couture (Inaugural Issue) [Forthcoming]

“Lowercase Prayer.” Alehouse (2008)

“Red Clay Suite.” The Gettysburg Review (Winter 2006)

“Hawkhoof Tea,” “Upon Learning that my Indian Student is a Sundancer,” “Driving Interstate West Through Georgia,” “dirty south moon,” and “Oklahoma Naming.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism (Fall 2005)

“Their Splendid” and “The Subject of Gardening.” 5AM (Fall 2005)

“Lexicon.” Saranac Review (Fall 2005)

“Blues Aubade, or Revision of the Lean, Post-Modernist Pastorale,” “Eatonton,” “Godfearing,” and “My Dream: Jesus, the Wilderness, Satan’s Sweet.” Callaloo (Fall 2004)

“Suddenly in Grace.” The Iowa Review (Fall 2004)

“Cotton Field Sestina.” American Poetry Review (May/June 2004)

“The Blues I Don’t Want to Remember,” “Here, One of Your Four Women,” and “The Little Boy Who Will Be My Father.” Callaloo (Summer 2004)

“Hard Grace” and “Reunion Scripture Two.” Crab Orchard Review (Summer 2004)

“I’ve Been Up Late Rereading the Book of Poems You Inscribed and Mailed to Me.” Gulf Coast (Summer 2004)

Anthologies

Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. Edited by Camille Dungy. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009. “Blues Aubade.”

The Civil Rights Reader: American Literature from Jim Crow to Reconciliation. Edited by Julie Buckner Armstrong and Amy Schmidt. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009. “Confederate Pride Day at Bama” and “Giving Thanks for Water.”

It’s All Love: Black Writers on Soul Mates, Family and Friends. Edited by Marita Golden. New York: Broadway/Random House, 2009. “Why I Will Praise an Old Black Man.”

New Voices: Contemporary Poetry from the U.S. Edited by H.L. Hix. Ireland, Irish Pages, 2008. “Outlandish Blues (The Movie)” and “The Gospel of Barbecue.”

Approaching Literature: Writing, Reading, Thinking (2nd Edition). Edited by Peter Schakel and Jack Ridl. New York, Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2007. “Outlandish Blues (The Movie).”

The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South. Edited by Nikki Finney. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007. “Don’t Know What Love Is.”

FICTION
Journals

“A Cheerful Tune.” Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review [Forthcoming]

“The Philosopher of Paper.” Mythium (Fall 2009)

“Mad Dog 20/20.” Indiana Review (30.1/Summer 2008)

“Easter Lilies in the West Room.” PMS: Poetry/Memoir/Story (No. 8/2008)

“All Them Crawfords.” Verb: an Audioquarterly (Vol. 2/No. 1, 2006)

“Come Day, Go Day.” The Kenyon Review (Winter 2006)

“If You Get There Before I Do.” Story Quarterly (2005/No. 41)

NONFICTION

“Blues for Tar Baby: The Problem of Contemporary Hip Hop Poetry.”KROnline: The Kenyon Review Online. (July 2010)

“April in Eatonton.” Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. Edited by Camille Dungy. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009.

“The Tail of Color.” These Hands I Know: African American Writers on Family. Edited by Afaa M. Weaver. Louisville: Sarabande, 2002.

WORKS-IN-PROGRESS

The Age of Phillis: Poems
When Water is Troubled: A Novel

CRITICAL TREATMENTS

“Mary Turner’s Blues,” by Julie Buckner Armstrong. African American Review [Forthcoming critical essay discussing my poem “dirty south moon” and Jean Toomer’s “Kabnis,” both of which address the lynching of Mary Turner in 1918.]

DOCUMENTARIES/INTERVIEWS

“That’s Proof She Wanted It,” a poem performed in NO! [A documentary on sexual assault in the Black community, directed, written and produced by Aishah Shahidah Simmons], 2006.

“Poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers presents her poem ‘Tuscaloosa: Riversong,’July 29, 2005, beside the Black Warrior River in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Available on Southern Spaces: An Internet Journal and Scholarly Forum, /http://www.southernspaces.org/contents/2005/jeffers/1a.htm/
(Emory University Digital Library Research Initiative)

“Speaking from a Creolized Environment: An Interview with Honorée Fanonne Jeffers,” conducted by Charles Rowell. Callaloo: Contemporary African-American Poetry: A New Wave [Special Issue]: (Vol. 27, No. 4/Fall 2004)

LECTURES/PANELS/SPEECHES

“Approaching the Age of Phillis Wheatley,” African American Intellectual Series, Higgins School of Humanities, Clark University, October 26, 2009

[Panel discussant] “Poetry and Spirituality,” Kentucky Women Writer Conference, September 12, 2009

“Finding Phillis Wheatley,” American Antiquarian Society, July 21, 2009

[Panel discussant] “Lyric Selves and Global Imperatives: Toward a Poetics and Ethics of Encounter,” Associated Writing Conference, February 12, 2009

[Panel discussant] “Poems About the Body,” Kent State University, November 17, 2008

[Panel discussant] “Resistance and Reconciliation,” Ninth Annual National Black Writers Conference, Medgar Evers College, March 29, 2008

[Panel chair] “African American Poetry in the Age of Callaloo,” paper presented at Associated Writing Programs Conference, Austin, TX, March 11, 2006

“Consider Bruh Rabbit: Vernacular and the African American Oral Tradition,” Panel paper presented at Associated Writing Programs Conference, Austin, TX, March 10, 2006

“Coming to the Crossroads,” commencement address presented at Bennington College Writing Seminars, June 25, 2005

“Blues for Tar Baby: Problems of Black Female Agency in Contemporary Black Poetry,” Panel paper presented at College Language Association, Athens, GA, April 8, 2005

POETRY READINGS [Selected]

Hardwick-Jones Keynote Reading (with Inaugural Poet Elizabeth Alexander), Kentucky Women Writer Conference, September 12, 2009

Women’s Studies 30th Anniversary Celebration, University of Houston-Clear Lake, March 12, 2009

Kent State University, November 17, 2008

Washington and Lee University, October 2, 2008

University of Houston, April 9, 2008

University of Notre Dame, January 23, 2008

“Leaps of Faith: A Poetry and Fiction Reading with Bret Lott and Honorée Fanonne Jeffers,” Associated Writing Programs Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, March 2, 2007 (Conference Featured Presentation)

“PMS/PoemMemoirStory ‘Lucky Seven’ Reading,” Associated Writing Programs Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, March 3, 2007

Old Dominion University Literary Festival, October 2, 2007

Farmingdale State College, September 20, 2007

Southern Illinois University (Crab Orchard Award Series), April 5, 2007

SERVICE National/University

Co-Director, Mark Allen Everett Reading Series, Department of English, The University of Oklahoma, Fall 2008-Spring 2009

Advisory Editor, The Kenyon Review, Spring 2006-present

Judge, Academy of American Poets Prize, Wichita State University, Spring 2007

Poetry Book Review Editor, Callaloo, Fall 2003-Spring 2006

Judge, Academy of American Poets Prize, Georgia College and State University, Spring 2006

Creative Writing Coordinator, Department of English, The University of Oklahoma, Fall 2004-Spring 2009

Board of Reviewers, Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, Fall 2002-Present

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS

Associated Writing Programs
The Modern Language Association
PEN/American Center
New England Historic Genealogy Society

REFERENCES

Available upon request

Full CV available upon request