Obsidian's Speculating Futures: Black Imagination & the Arts

by Duriel E. Harris (editor), Sheree Renée Thomas (Editor)

Fiction. Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. Drama. African & African American Studies. Afrofuturism. "When you chose to alter the history and ideology that has and continues to oppress you, you choose the path of a creator," writes special issue guest editor Sheree Ren�e Thomas in her introduction to OBSIDIAN'S SPECULATING FUTURES: BLACK IMAGINATION AND THE ARTS. "Under the powerful lens of Afrofuturism, the impossible is possible. It is creative alchemy. The spirit and rhythm of a culture is preserved and transformed; the past is not only contested but sacred space." Winner of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) 2018 Parnassus Award, which recognizes significant realization of editorial mission, SPECULATING FUTURES includes fiction, poetry, criticism, essays, scripts, visual art & more from African writers & artists around the world, including Sofia Samatar, Tochi Onyebuchi, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Walidah Imarisha, Nisi Shawl, Isiah Lavender III, Krista Franklin, and Sheree Ren�e Thomas, among many others.

276 pages, Paperback

Published December 27, 2019

About the author

Duriel E. Harris is a poet, performer, and sound artist. She is author of three print volumes of poetry, including her most recent, No Dictionary of a Living Tongue (Nightboat, 2017), Drag (2003) and Amnesiac: Poems (2010). Multi-genre works include her one-person theatrical performance Thingification, as well as Speleology (2011), a video collaboration with artist Scott Rankin. Recent and upcoming appearances include performances at the Lake Forest College Allan L. Carr Theatre, the Chicago Jazz Festival (with Douglas Ewart & Inventions), the Greenhouse Theater (Chicago), the Naropa Capitalocene, The Votive Poetics Workshop (New Zealand), and Festival Internacional de Poesía de La Habana (Cuba).

Cofounder of the avant garde poetry/performance trio The Black Took Collective, Harris has been a MacDowell and Millay Colony fellow and has received grants from the Illinois Arts Council Agency, the Cave Canem Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Her work has appeared in numerous venues, including BAX, Mandorla, The &Now Awards, Of Poetry & Protest, Ploughshares, Troubling the Line, and The Best of Fence; and her compositions have been translated into Polish, German, and Spanish. Harris earned degrees in Literature from Yale University and NYU, and a PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago Program for Writers.

The 2018 Offen Poet, Harris is an associate professor of English in the graduate creative writing program at Illinois State University and the Editor of Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora.