She graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 2001. She was a faculty member in the Dept of English at Bucknell University (PA) for five years before going to UW Oshkosh, in 2005, specifically to direct the AASP. Her main areas of research interest are African American crime fiction, African American women's literature, post WW II, and African American science fiction. She is spending academic year 2008-2009 working at the Institute, completing revisions on a manuscript about Chester Himes's Harlem crime series.