Originally from Los Angeles, Cherene Sherrard is a poet, scholar, and essayist. She is the Sally Mead Hands-Bascom Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her creative writing and research explores the nuanced and multifaceted aspects of black life in the diaspora. She is the author of Portraits of the New Negro Woman: Visual and Literary Culture in the Harlem Renaissance (2007) and Dorothy West’s Paradise: A Biography of Class and Color (2011) Her debut poetry collection, Vixen, was published in 2017 and her chapbook, Mistress, Reclining was the winner of the new women’s voice award from Finishing Line Press. Her creative nonfiction and poetry has been published in The Rumpus, Plume, The New York Times Magazine, Verse Daily, The Journal, Terrain.org, Blackbird, Water~Stone Review, Prairie Schooner, and numerous other journals. She has been the recipient of numerous awards including a Wisconsin Arts Board Grant and poetry fellowships to Ragdale and Sewanee Writer’s Conference.