John Keene

John Keene is the author and coauthor of a handful of books, including the award-winning collection Counternarratives (New Directions, 2015), and the recipient of many honors, including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. He has translated poetry, fiction, and essays from Portuguese, French, and Spanish, including Brazilian writer Hilda Hilst’s novel Letters from a Seducer (Nightboat, 2014). His essay “Translating Poetry, Translating Blackness,” featured on the Poetry Foundation’s website Harriet, has helped to encourage and galvanize translators of Black non-Anglophone writing. He serves as a member of the organizational committee for the African Poetry Book Series, under the auspices of the University of Nebraska’s African Poetry Book Fund and Prairie Schooner. Keene chairs the Department of African American and African Studies and is Distinguished Professor of English and African American Studies at Rutgers University-Newark, and also teaches in the Rutgers-Newark MFA in Creative Writing program.