Word Ballast guest Carmen R. Gillespie

Join Billy Burgos as he Talks to Carmen R. Gillespie Carmen R. Gillespie received her Ph.D. from Emory University. She is Professor of English and Director of the Griot Institute for Africana Studies at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. She is a scholar of American, African American, and Caribbean literatures and cultures and a poet. In addition to journal and poem publications, she is the author of the books A Critical Companion to Toni Morrison (2007), A Critical Companion to Alice Walker (2011), and the editor of The Clearing: Forty Years with Toni Morrison, 1970 - 2010 (2011). Carmen also has a published a poetry chapbook, Lining the Rails (2008) and a poetry book, Jonestown: A Vexation. In 2005, Carmen was the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship for Excellence in Poetry.