Janis A. Mayes

Janis A. Mayes is a professor of literatures in the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University. She is a literary translator who translates from French to English and English to French. Her translations include “Les morts du 11 Septembre” (“The Dead of September 11”) by Toni Morrison; “Ramener les blues chez soi” (“Taking the Blues Back Home”) by Jayne Cortez; A Rain of Words: A Bi-lingual Anthology of Women’s Poetry in Francophone Africa (University of Virginia Press, 2009; ed. Irène Assiba d’Almeida); The Blind Kingdom (Le royaume aveugle) by Véronique Tadjo (Ayebia Clarke Publishing, 2008); and The City Where No One Dies (La ville où nul ne meurt) by Bernard Binlin Dadie (Three Continents Press, 1986). Further publications include Toni Morrison: Au-delà du visible ordinaire/Beyond the Ordinary Visible (Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2015; with A. Kekeh-Dika and M. Graham) and Mapping Intersections: African Literature and African Development (Africa World Press, 1998; with Anne V. Adams). A past Fulbright scholar with teaching experience in the Ivory Coast and Senegal, she is a member of the Présence Africaine editorial board.

Photo by Stephen Sartori.