Authors
Find your favorite authors featured in WLT or browse the entire list.
Bunmi Ishola
Bunmi Ishola is a former journalist and middle-school teacher who now works in children’s book publishing. She’s constantly guilty of tsundoku, but that hasn’t stopped her from buying more books. She loves to travel and has been to over twenty countries and every continent except Antarctica. When she’s not reading, buying books, or traveling, she’s probably watching something on Disney+, HGTV, or Food Network. You can find this former WLT intern on Instagram @bunmi_ishola.
Jale Ismayil
Jale Ismayil was born in 1978 and received her graduate degree from the Baku State University School of Journalism. She has worked for several newspapers and is an editor at an advertising agency. She has published two books, one of short stories, Heykalin içindaki (2010; Stories inside a monument) and another of poetry, Birnafasa (2015; In one breath).
Albertine M. Itela
Born in Kinshasa in 1975, Albertine M. Itela spent her childhood between Belgium, Germany, and the ex-Zaire before settling in France. After graduating in political sociology at the Sorbonne, she published several articles for Radio France Outremer before becoming an actress, theater teacher, and dramatist. “Gare du Nord,” published in Kanyar, is her first published short story. She is currently working on a collection of stories about women at the time of the independence of Congo-Zaire.
Photo by Christina Karmalitadiv>Viktor Ivaniv
Viktor Ivaniv was born in 1977 in Novosibirsk. He is the author of three books of prose, Gorod Vinograd (2003; Vinograd city), Vosstanie grez (2009; The uprising of daydreams), and Dnevnik nabliudenii (2011; Diary of observations) as well as a collection of poetry, Stekliannyi chelovek i zele-naia plastinka (2006; The glass man and the green record). His writing was short-listed for the Debut Prize (poetry category) in 2002 and the Andrei Belyi Prize (prose category) in 2009. Ivaniv currently lives and works in Novosibirsk as a librarian at the State Public Scientific Library.
Sangamithra Iyer
Sangamithra Iyer is the founder of the Literary Animal Project. She’s the recipient of a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant for her first book, forthcoming from Milkweed Editions.
Photo by Billy Rusakkodiv>Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen
Finnish novelist and short-story writer Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen has twice won the Kuvastaja Fantasy Prize and four times the Atorox Award for Fantasy. The author of The Rabbit Back Literature Society, Jääskeläinen teaches Finnish language and literature at Jyväskylän Lyseo Upper Secondary School.
Inaya Jaber
Inaya Jaber is a Lebanese writer and journalist. She has published six books of poetry. Her 2017 collection of short stories, La ahada yudhi’u fi beirut (Nobody gets lost in Beirut), is her first book of prose. In addition to working as a journalist for over twenty years for As-Safir and Al-Quds Al-Arabi, she is a singer and graduate of the Lebanese National Higher Conservatory of Music. She lives in Beirut.
Ashaki M. Jackson
Ashaki M. Jackson is the author of two chapter-length collections, Language Lesson (Miel, 2016) and Surveillance (Writ Large Press, 2016). Readers may find Dr. Jackson’s poetry and essays in Obsidian, 7x7 LA, CURA, Prairie Schooner, Midnight Breakfast, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and Bettering American Poetry, among other publications. She currently serves as executive editor at The Offing literary magazine. She earned her MFA (poetry) from Antioch University Los Angeles and her doctorate (social psychology) from Claremont Graduate University.
Photo: Erin Patrice O'Briendiv>Major Jackson
A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Major Jackson is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Absurd Man (Norton, 2020). His edited volumes of poetry include Renga for Obama and Best American Poetry 2019. He teaches at Vanderbilt University.
Didi Jackson
Didi Jackson is the author of Moon Jar and the forthcoming collection My Infinity. She is the recipient of the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America and teaches creative writing at Vanderbilt University.
Rita D. Jacobs
Rita D. Jacobs is professor emerita of English at Montclair State University and author of The Way In: Journal Writing for Self-Discovery, Tommy: The Musical, A Day in the Life of America, and A Day in the Life of Canada. She is a widely published journalist and book reviewer whose articles have appeared in World Literature Today, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Frequent Flyer, and GRAPHIS, among others.
Alex Jacobs
Alex Jacobs (Karoniaktahke), St. Regis Mohawk, has been involved in Native media since the 1970s; anthologized in Native poetry collections; and a founding member of Akwesasne Notes, Indian Time, Akwekon, and Mohawk Nation Radio. He has read poetry from the Nuyorican Poets Café NYC, IAIA Santa Fe, and Amerika Haus in Germany to Talking Stick in Vancouver, BC; he was a freelancer for Indian Country Today (2013–2017); and produces spoken-word CDs with his son DJ Duran Flint. He won a NYSCA Poetry fellowship in 1995 and a LOFT Multicultural Spoken Word Award in 2013.
Adriana X. Jacobs
Adriana X. Jacobs is the Cowley Lecturer in modern Hebrew literature at the University of Oxford and specializes in contemporary Israeli poetry and translation. She is completing her first book, Strange Cocktail: Poetics and Practices of Translation in Modern Hebrew Poetry.
Photo credit: Linda Ibbotsondiv>Safia Jama
A Cave Canem graduate fellow, Safia Jama has published poetry in Ploughshares, RHINO, Cagibi, Boston Review, Spoken Black Girl, and No Dear. Her poetry has also been featured on WNYC’s Morning Edition and CUNY TV’s Shades of US series. She is the author of Notes on Resilience, included in the New-Generation African Poets box set (Akashic, 2020).
Camilo Jaramillo
Camilo Jaramillo was born in Bogotá, Colombia, although he currently lives in San Francisco, California. He received his PhD in Latin American literature from the University of California, Berkeley. An independent scholar, translator, and language arts teacher, he has written varied pieces on Latin American film, literature, and ecocriticism, some of them published by Latin American Literature Today.
Meetra Javed
Meetra Javed is a Pakistani American poet, writer, and multidisciplinary artist who also works for a creative agency. She has been accepted to the Yale Writers Conference, Bound Writers Retreat, John Ashbery’s the Home School, and published in several zines. She is currently in the process of editing her first full-length poetry book, Standard Deviation, and is working on her first screenplay.
Salma Khadra Jayyusi
Salma Khadra Jayyusi is a renowned Palestinian poet, critic, and literary historian whose books of poetry and criticism have been published worldwide. She is the founder and director of PROTA for the translation of Arabic literature into English and of East-West Nexus for studies of Arab civilization and its legacies. With forty books to her credit, she has earned numerous awards for her contributions.
Ruthie Jenrbekova
Ruthie Jenrbekova was born in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and graduated from the Kazakh State University as an ecologist. Since 1997, she has been involved in various literary, artistic, and curatorial activities and also works as a cultural organizer. Together with Maria Vilkovisky, she is the cofounder of the imaginary art institution krёlex zentre. Her fields of interest include performance philosophy, material semiotics, and art-based methodologies. Currently a PhD candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, she lives and works in Almaty and Vienna.
Sandra Jensen
Sandra Jensen has a number of short-story and flash-fiction publications in literary journals and magazines and has received a number of awards, including the 2012 bosque Fiction Competition and the J. G. Farrell Award for best novel-in-progress. Born in South Africa, Jensen has British and Canadian citizenship.
Claudia Salazar Jiménez
Claudia Salazar Jiménez’s (b. 1976, Lima) short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals. Her first novel, La sangre de la aurora, was awarded the prestigious 2014 Premio Las Américas. The English translation, Blood of the Dawn, was published in 2016 by Deep Vellum to wide acclaim. She currently lives in New York City.
Cindy Jiménez-Vera
Cindy Jiménez-Vera (b. 1978, San Sebastián del Pepino) is a poet, librarian, translator, and editor. She is the author of I’ll Trade You This Island: Selected Poems / Te cambio esta isla: poemas escogidos, translated from the Spanish by Guillermo Rebollo-Gil.
Catherine John
Catherine John is an associate professor of African American and Caribbean literature in OU’s English Department. Dr. John is the author of Clear Word and Third Sight: Folk Groundings and Diasporic Consciousness in African Caribbean Writing (Duke Press & UWI Press). She is also finishing up the book Diasporic Orisa: A Philosophy of Grassroots Cultural Practice and beginning work on Cyril George Bailey: The Memoir of Stationmaster and the Genealogy of a Family. She has published in film studies, gender studies, hip-hop, and classroom pedagogy. She has received three teaching awards: the Irene Rothbaum Award (2004), the Good Teaching Award (2012), and the General Education Teaching Award (2018).
Hannibal B. Johnson
Hannibal B. Johnson, a Harvard Law School graduate, is an author, attorney, consultant, and college professor. Johnson serves on the federal 400 Years of African American History Commission, where he chairs the Economics & Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. He chaired the Education Committee for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission and served as local curator of its world-class history center, Greenwood Rising. His books, including Black Wall Street 100, chronicle the African American experience in Oklahoma and its indelible impact on American history. Johnson has received numerous honors and awards for his work and community service, including a lifetime achievement award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book and induction into the Tulsa Hall of Fame and the Oklahoma Hall of Fame.
Emily D. Johnson
Emily D. Johnson is the Brian and Sandra O’Brien Presidential Professor of Russian at the University of Oklahoma. She studies twentieth-century Russian literature and history and the legacy of the Stalinist labor camp system. Her most recent book is Rethinking the Gulag (Indiana University Press, 2022), which she co-edited with Alan Barenberg.
