Born in Miami, raised in England and West Virginia, and educated in Texas, Joy Castro is the award-winning author of the memoir The Truth Book, two literary thrillers set in post-Katrina New Orleans: Hell or High Water and Nearer Home, the essay collection Island of Bones, and the short fiction collection How Winter Began. Her work has appeared in venues including Fourth Genre, North American Review, Salon, Afro-Hispanic Review,Gulf Coast, and the New York Times Magazine. Winner of the Nebraska Book Award and an International Latino Book Award, Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award, and editor of the anthology Family Trouble, she’s the Susan J. Rosowski Professor of English and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she teaches creative writing, literature, and Latinx studies. She currently serves as the Writer in Residence at Vanderbilt University.
Naomi Jackson is author of The Star Side of Bird Hill, a novel published by Penguin Press in June 2015. The Star Side of Bird Hill was nominated for an NAACP Image Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and the International Dublin Literary Award. Star Side was named an Honor Book for Fiction by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Star Side is the winner of Late Night Library's 2016 Debut-litzer Prize. First Lady of New York City Chirlane McCray selected the novel for the City's 2016 Gracie Book Club. The book has been reviewed by The New York Times, The New Yorker, Kirkus Reviews, NPR.org and Entertainment Weekly, which called Star Side“a gem of a book.” Publishers Weekly named Jackson a Writer to Watch.
Jackson studied fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She traveled to South Africa on a Fulbright scholarship, where she received an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. A graduate of Williams College, her work has appeared in literary journals and magazines in the United States and abroad, including Tin House, brilliant corners, Obsidian, Poets & Writers, and The Caribbean Writer. She is the recipient of residencies and fellowships from Bread Loaf,MacDowell Colony, Djerassi, the University of Pennsylvania’s Kelly Writers House, Hedgebrook, and the Camargo Foundation.
Jackson has taught at the University of Iowa, University of Pennsylvania, City College of New York, and Oberlin College. Jackson was born and raised in Brooklyn by West Indian parents.
