Dana A. Williams is Professor of African American Literature and Dean of the Graduate School at Howard University. She has published extensively in African American literature and culture and teaches a range of graduate and undergraduate classes in African American literature and in writing studies. She is a former president of the College Language Association--the largest and oldest organization for faculty of color who teach languages and literature--2nd vice-president of the Modern Languages Association, and President of the Toni Morrison Society. A Ford Foundation fellow at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, and a John Hope Franklin Humanities Center fellow at Duke University, Williams taught at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge before returning to her alma mater to teach in the Department of English. Williams is a native of Louisiana and a graduate of Grambling State University. She serves on the advisory board for the Judge Alexander Williams Center at the University of Maryland, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Hurston/Wright Foundation, the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University, the August Wilson Society, and the Center for Black Writing at Medgar Evers College.