I’m a Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Writing and Culture at the University of York.
I’ve been teaching in higher education since 2009, with a focus on literature, race, and culture. My doctoral research explored representations of racial passing in African American women’s writing. I’ve written extensively on the work of Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Gloria Naylor, Dorothy West, and Nella Larsen.
I’m a teacher at heart. At York, I offer a specialist module on contemporary Black literature and film. It examines work by Caleb Azumah Nelson, Brandon Taylor, Raven Leilani, Natasha Brown, Rachel Long, Steve McQueen, Barry Jenkins, and Kayo Chingonyi. I’m particularly interested in questions of representation, history, the literary marketplace, uncertainty, ambiguity, affect, and Black temporality. These interests also shape my practice-based research as a poet and non-fiction writer.
I’ve held a range of senior leadership positions in learning and teaching, including School Learning and Teaching Lead (at York St John University) and Director of Undergraduate Teaching (at the University of York). I supervise a number of PhD projects (including theses on wrestling, nature writing, Black speculative fiction, and African American women’s writing). I’ve experience of policy work (having previously been a member of the Runnymede Trust’s Emerging Scholars Forum and a 2025 fellow at The York Policy Engine).
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Education
BA American Studies (University of Sheffield)
Study Abroad (African American Studies and Literature) - University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
MA American Literature (University of Sheffield)
PhD African American Literature (University of Sheffield)
Cool things
York Policy Engine Fellow 2025
BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker 2024
Co-organiser: Ledbury Poetry Critics Scheme (2021; with Sandeep Parmar, Sarah Howe, Vidyan Ravinthiran, Alycia Pirmohamed & Dave Coates)
Finalist: Aurora Prize for Writing (2022; judged by Georgina Wilding)
Nominee: Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship (2021)
Shortlisted: Oxford Brookes International Poetry Prize (2021; judged by Fiona Benson)
Winner: Poetry London Mentorship Scheme Award (2020; mentored by Rachel Long)
Research areas and specialisms
Creative writing (practice-led research)
Literary studies - contemporary Black writing (UK and US), African American literature (1850 - present)
Black humanities
American studies (popular culture, racial passing)
Pedagogy
Work
Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Writing - University of York (2021 — present)
Associate Professor in Literature - York St John University (2013 — 2021)
Teaching Associate - University of Sheffield (2009 - 2013)
Radio/podcast
BBC Radio 3 - The Essay: Losing Yourself in Books (March 2025)
BBC Free Thinking (Why Read?) hosted by Shahidha Bari feat. Jonathan Egid, Gabriel Gatehouse, Rana Mitter, Elif Shafak, & Tiffany Watt Smith (October 2024)
BBC New Thinking: 2024’s New Generation Thinkers (May 2024)
Morley Prize Podcast: Dr Janine Bradbury (Series 4, Episode 1, 2024).
BBC Radio 4: Great Lives: Adjoa Andoh on Zora Neale Hurston, Jan 2023.
BBC Radio 4: Woman’s Hour - interviewed by Jenni Murray about Brit Bennett’s novel The Vanishing Half (2020)
BBC Radio 4: Woman’s Hour - interviewed by Jenni Murray about the career of Zora Neale Hurston (2013).
Poetry Pamphlet
Sometimes Real Love Comes Quick & Easy (ignitionpress 2024) A Poetry Book Society Autumn 2024 Pamphlet Pick
Review of Sometimes Real Love Comes Quick & Easy - Poetry Review (Winter 2024)
Online launch of Sometimes Real Love Comes Quick & Easy (ignitionpress 2024) w/ Eric Yip and Eira Murphy.
Individual poems
“SOROR AVE VIVAS IN DEO” featured in Women in York, a film produced by the Yorkshire and North East Film Archive and York St John University.
“Jellyfish”, “Stranger Days’”, and “Meridian” in Blood & Cord: Writers on Early Parenthood edited by Abi Curtis (Emma Press, 2023).
“it’s 1994 & this brown girl thinks she smells like teen spirit” and “American Smooth” in Magma 85: Poems for Schools edited by Ashley Hickson Lovence, Gill Ward, and Laurie Smith (2023)
“Pulled” published via the Aurora Prize for Writing (2022)
“On the Occasion of My Son Gumming His First Drumstick” in Oxford Poetry 093 (Winter 21/22)
“SOROR AVE VIVAS IN DEO” & “The Rum Tasting of the Century” in Black Lines: The Journal of Black British Writing, Issue 1 (2021)
Poetry readings/events/papers
“Sounds Like Teen Spirit: Writing Through Nirvana’s Nevermind” Other Worlds: Contemporary Ekphrastic Poetry w/ Emily Berry, Anthony V. Capildeo, Alycia Pirmohamed, Padraig Regan, and Kandace Siobhan Walker (The Open University, May 2024)
Rise Up! w/ Charlotte Shevchenko-Knight and Alex Mepham (2023)
York Literature Festival Poetry reading w/ Shash Trevett and Leo Boix (2023)
Poetry in Aldeburgh | Poetry London Celebrates 100 Issues with editor André Naffis-Sahely, Rachel Long, Vidyan Ravinthiran, Momtaza Mehri and Jemilea Wisdom-Baako (2021)
Selected academic essays
“Notes From the Edge: Reflections on Black Literature, Feeling, and Teaching.” Contemporary Literature from the Classroom in Post-45 Contemporaries (2024).
The Ancestor, Passing, and Imagination in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child.” The Bloomsbury Handbook to Toni Morrison edited by Linda Wagner-Martin and Kelly Reames (2023).
“Notes on Decolonising the Curriculum.” BLACKLINES: The Journal of Black British Writing, Issue 1, Summer 2021.
“Grappling with Race: Wrestling and Racial (Mis)representation” in Everything Patterned. Wrestling Resurgence, 2020.
“Grace Jones: Cyborg Memoirist.” Music/Memory/Memoir edited by Robert Edgar, Fraser Mann, Helen Pleasance. New York: Bloomsbury, 2019.
“Parodying Racial Passing in Chappelle’s Show and Key & Peele.” Comedy and the Politics of Representation: Mocking the Weak edited by Helen Davis and Sarah Illot. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
Grappling and Ga(y)zing: Gender, Sexuality, and Performance in the WWE Debut of Goldust.” Performance and Pro Wrestling. edited by Broderick Chow, Laine Eero, Claire Warden. London: Routledge, 2016.
“Black, female, and postgraduate: why I cannot be the only one.” Guardian, 2013.
“Zora Neale Hurston and the Paradox of Patronage.” Critical Insights: Zora Neale Hurston edited by Sharon Lynette Jones. Ipswich: Salem Press, 2013.
Selected freelance work
In Conversation with Kwame Kwei-Armah.” Beneatha’s Place Programme (Young Vic, 2023).
“On Islands.” Further than the Furthest Thing Programme (Young Vic, 2023).
"Passing for white”: how a taboo film genre is being revived to expose racial privilege.’ Guardian, 2018.
Selected academic talks
“On Sentimentality (After Mary Ruefle): Wrestling with Feeling” (University of York, September 2024)
“What Women Wrestle With: Notes on Joanie Laurer” (University of York , May 2024)
“The Revenant Mulatta” (University of Cambridge, February 2022)
“Don Draper’s Mammy: Racial Ambiguity in AMC’s Mad Men” (University of Sussex, November 2021)
“Re-imagining Passing: A Feminist Project" (University of York February 2019)
“Passing and Its Transatlantic Contexts.” (University of Glasgow, November 2018)
“Navigating the Library as a Researcher of Colour.” UX in Libraries Yearbook, June 2018
“Passing Amid Protest” (Kings College London, April 2018, British Association of American Studies Conference)
“Performance and Professional Wrestling” (Leicester, Oct 17, Everybody’s Reading Festival)
“Beyond the Passing-For-White Figure in Post-Black Comedy” (University of Leeds 2014, Race in the Americas Seminar)