Poet and novelist John Keene grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. He earned a BA at Harvard University and an MFA at New York University. He is the author of the novella and story collection Counternarratives (2015), the poetry collection Seismosis (2006, with art by Christopher Stackhouse), and the novel Annotations (1995). A member of the Dark Room Collective, Keene’s honors include a Whiting Award and fellowships from Cave Canem, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the New York Times Foundation, Yaddo, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Pan-African Literary Forum. He has taught at Northwestern University and served as the managing editor of Callaloo. He is an associate professor of English, African American Studies, and African Studies at Rutgers University–Newark. Source