LaSHONDA KATRICE BARNETT was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and raised in Park Forest, Illinois. Recipient of the College Language Association's Margaret Walker Award for Short Fiction and the Barbara Deming Foundation's Artist Grant for Short Fiction, Barnett is the author of Callaloo (1999). She recently completed her first novel, Jam! (forth).
A lover and scholar of black music and an avid interviewer, Barnett conducted over forty interviews with singer-songwriters and edited the volumes, I GOT THUNDER: Black Women Songwriters On Their Craft (2007) and OFF THE RECORD: Conversations With African American & Brazilian Women Musicians, (forthcoming, Rowman & Littlefield, 2012). She has hosted her own jazz radio program on WBAI (99.5 FM, NYC); consulted and taught 'Women in Jazz' at New York City's Jazz at Lincoln Center; and lectured on the music both nationally and internationally in Austria, Brazil, France, Germany and South Africa.
Barnett has taught literature and history at the University of Richmond, Hampton University, Columbia University's Institute for Research in African American Studies, and Sarah Lawrence College. Currently, she teaches African American literature at the City University of New York. She divides her time between home on Manhattan's upper west side and Providence, Rhode Island, where she is Visiting Scholar (2011-) at Brown University, researching her next historical novel.
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