Dolen Perkins-Valdez | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Occupation | Writer and professor |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | American |
| Citizenship | US |
| Education | Harvard College (BA) George Washington University (PhD) |
| Genre | Novel |
| Notable works | Wench: A Novel (2010); Balm: A Novel (2015) |
| Website | |
| dolenperkinsvaldez | |
Dolen Perkins-Valdez is a black American writer, best known for her debut novel Wench: A Novel (2010), which became a bestseller.
She is chair of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation Board of Directors. [1]
Dolen Perkins-Valdez attended Harvard College as an undergraduate, earning a BA degree. She completed a PhD in English at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Perkins-Valdez has published short fiction and essays in such magazines as The Kenyon Review , StoryQuarterly , StorySouth , African American Review, PMS: PoemMemoirStory, North Carolina Literary Review, Richard Wright Newsletter, and SLI: Studies in Literary Imagination. [2]
As of 2016 [update] she was an associate professor at American University in Washington, D.C. [3]
Perkins-Valdez has said she was inspired to write her debut novel, Wench: A Novel (2010), after reading a biography of W.E.B. Dubois and coming across a brief reference to the founding of Wilberforce University. It was noted as first being based at[ clarification needed ] the buildings and grounds of a former, privately owned resort called Tawawa House, named for the "yellow springs" in the area. The iron-rich waters were thought to have medicinal value. Among the regular summer visitors to the Ohio resort in the antebellum period were Southern white planters and their enslaved mistresses of color. [4]
Wench features Lizzie, a young enslaved woman, and her complicated relationship with her master. It also explores the lives of three other mistresses of color, whom Lizzie comes to know at the resort. They are influenced by spending time in a free state, and seeing free people of color there. It was published by HarperCollins in 2010 and in paperback the following year.
The book received positive reviews and notice as a debut novel. [5] The paperback edition became a bestseller. The novel was selected by NPR in 2010 as one of five books published that year that was recommended to book clubs, for "something to talk about". [6]
In 2013, Perkins-Valdez was invited to write an introductory essay to the 37th edition of Solomon Northup's autobiography Twelve Years a Slave . [7]
Her second novel, Balm, was published in May 2015. [8] The novel is set in Chicago during the Reconstruction Era. It explores a Tennessee black healer named Madge, who was born free; a white widowed spiritualist named Sadie; and a freedman called Hemp from Kentucky, who gained freedom by fighting with the Union Army. Each migrated to Chicago after the war, along with thousands of others working to rebuild their lives and to explore new kinds of freedom. [9]
Perkins-Valdez said that she wanted to "move the story out of the battlegrounds of the war into a place like Chicago [...] taking it out of those traditional spaces such as the South or even thinking of Virginia or Pennsylvania... and putting it somewhere that was absolutely affected by the war but was still, in some ways, peripheral." [9]
Dolen's third novel Take My Hand was published by Berkley Books/Penguin Random House in Spring 2022. [10] According to its epilogue, it was inspired by a real case in which two sisters, aged 12 and 14, were sterilized against their will, in June 1973.
Solomon Northup was an American abolitionist and the primary author of the memoir Twelve Years a Slave. A free-born African American from New York, he was the son of a freed slave and a free woman of color. A farmer and a professional violinist, Northup had been a landowner in Washington County, New York. In 1841, he was offered a traveling musician's job and went to Washington, D.C. ; there he was drugged and kidnapped into slavery. He was shipped to New Orleans, purchased by a planter, and held as a slave for 12 years in the Red River region of Louisiana, mostly in Avoyelles Parish. He remained a slave until he met Samuel Bass, a Canadian working on his plantation who helped get word to New York, where state law provided aid to free New York citizens who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. His family and friends enlisted the aid of the Governor of New York, Washington Hunt, and Northup regained his freedom on January 3, 1853.
Octavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction author and a multiple recipient of the Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, Butler became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.
A resort is a self-contained commercial establishment that tries to provide most of a vacationer's wants, such as food, drink, swimming, accommodation, sports, entertainment and shopping, on the premises. A hotel is frequently a central feature of a resort and the term resort may be used for a hotel that provides an array of entertainment and recreational activities. Some resorts are also condominium complexes that are timeshares or owned fractionally or wholly owned condominium. A resort is not always a commercial establishment operated by a single company, but in the late 20th century, that sort of facility became more common.
Robert Anthony Stone was an American novelist, journalist, and college professor.
Ann Patchett is an American author. She received the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction in the same year, for her novel Bel Canto. Patchett's other novels include The Patron Saint of Liars (1992), Taft (1994), The Magician's Assistant (1997), Run (2007), State of Wonder (2011), Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023). The Dutch House was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Lan Samantha Chang is an American novelist and short story writer. She is the author of The Family Chao (2022) and short story collection Hunger. For her fiction, which explores Chinese American experiences, she is a recipient of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Berlin Prize, the PEN/Open Book Award and the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award.
Stacey D'Erasmo is an American author and literary critic.
Unburnable is a 2006 novel written by Antiguan author Marie-Elena John and published by HarperCollins/Amistad. It is John's debut novel. Part historical fiction, murder mystery, and neo-slave narrative, Unburnable is a multi-generational saga that follows the African Diaspora in the United States and the Caribbean, offering a reinterpretation of black history. John was an Africa Development specialist in New York City and Washington, D.C., prior to turning to writing. Since publication of Unburnable, she has worked with the United Nations, currently serving as Senior Racial Justice Lead at UN Women.
Twelve Years a Slave is an 1853 memoir and slave narrative by Solomon Northup as told to and written by David Wilson. Northup, a black man who was born free in New York state, details himself being tricked to go to Washington, D.C., where he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South. He was in bondage for 12 years in Louisiana before he was able to secretly get information to friends and family in New York, who in turn secured his release with the aid of the state. Northup's account provides extensive details on the slave markets in Washington, D.C., and New Orleans, and describes at length cotton and sugar cultivation and slave treatment on major plantations in Louisiana.
Lauren Groff is an American novelist and short story writer. She has written five novels and two short story collections, including Fates and Furies (2015), Florida (2018), Matrix (2022), and The Vaster Wilds (2023).
Kate Christensen is an American novelist. She won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her fourth novel, The Great Man, about a painter and the three women in his life. Her previous novels are In the Drink (1999), Jeremy Thrane (2001), and The Epicure's Lament (2004). Her fifth novel, Trouble (2009), was released in paperback by Vintage/Anchor in June 2010. Her sixth novel, The Astral, was published in hardcover by Doubleday in June 2011. She is also the author of two food-related memoirs, Blue Plate Special and How to Cook a Moose, the latter of which won the 2016 Maine Literary Award for memoir.
The PEN/Faulkner Foundation is an independent charitable arts foundation that supports the art of fiction and encourages readers of all ages. It accomplishes this through a number of programs, including its flagship PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award for short fiction, and a number of educational and public literary programs. Since 1983 the Foundation's administration has been located in Washington, D.C.. The Foundation was established in 1980 by National Book Award winner Mary Lee Settle. Novelist Robert Stone served as the Chairman of the PEN/Faulkner Board of Directors for over thirty years beginning in 1982.
Julianna Baggott is a novelist, essayist, and poet who also writes under the pen names Bridget Asher and N.E. Bode. She is an associate professor at Florida State University's College of Motion Picture Arts. She is a 2013 recipient of the Alex Awards.
Patsey was an African-American enslaved woman. Solomon Northup wrote about her in his book Twelve Years a Slave, which is the source for most of the information known about her. There have been two adaptations of the book in film, Solomon Northup's Odyssey in 1984 and the better known 12 Years a Slave, in 2013. In the latter Patsey was portrayed by Lupita Nyong'o, who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance.
Wench: A Novel is the 2010 debut novel of American author Dolen Perkins-Valdez. It explores the lives of four young, enslaved women of color, who are mistresses of their wealthy white masters, men of the South, and who spend summers at Tawawa House, a resort in the free state of Ohio. There the women share their reactions to their lives and seeing a free society and free people of color.
Namwali Serpell is an American and Zambian writer who teaches in the United States. In April 2014, she was named on Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with the potential and talent to define trends in African literature. Her short story "The Sack" won the 2015 Caine Prize for African fiction in English. In 2020, Serpell won the Belles-lettres category Grand Prix of Literary Associations 2019 for her debut novel The Old Drift.
Kirstin Valdez Quade is an American writer.
Kima Jones is an American writer, poet and literary publicist. She is the founder of the Jack Jones Literary Arts, a literary publicity firm.
Dept. of Speculation is a 2014 novel by American author Jenny Offill. The novel received positive reviews, and has been compared to Offill's later work, Weather.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)| External audio | |
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 "'Balm' Looks At Civil War After The Battles, Outside The South", NPR, June 8, 2015 |
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