​"In a revelatory remapping of the African American literary tradition, Kathy Lou Schultz tracks the emergence of 'Afro-modernist' poetics among a lineage of writers whose work defies the limitations of our habitual compartmentalization of history into discrete periods such as the 'Harlem Renaissance' or the 'Black Arts Movement.' If the book first of all delivers a compelling and much-needed case for Tolson's importance, it also offers new insights into the long-form experiments of Hughes and Baraka, finding in the black adoption of the epic form an impatience with cramp and constriction; an impulse for constellation and montage; an aspiration towards a diasporic poetry that would combine the unpredictability of music with the authority of the archive."

--Brent Hayes Edwards

Other works from Poet-Scholar Kathy Lou Schultz:

Poet-Scholar Kathy Lou Schultz is the author of The Afro-Modernist Epic and Literary History: Tolson, Hughes, Baraka (Palgrave), as well as four collections of poems, most recently Biting Midge: Works in Prose (Belladona) and Some Vague Wife (Atelos). Schultz's articles have appeared in a wide variety of scholarly journals including Contemporary Literature, Journal of Modern Literature, and Jacket2. Her poems are published in literary journals including New American Writing, ​Cleaver Magazine, OnandOnScreen, Fence Magazine, Hambone, Electronic Poetry Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Mirage #4/Period(ical), Fourteen Hills, and others.

She has been an invited speaker and performer at universities and arts venues throughout the U.S. and Europe, including the University of Fribourg (Switzerland); the University of Sussex (UK); The Pennsylvania State University; the University of Maine; the University of California, Santa Cruz; the Kelly Writers House (University of Pennsylvania); New Langston Arts (San Francisco); Louis K. Meisel Gallery (New York City); and the San Francisco International Book Festival. She has collaborated and performed with musicians in Philadelphia, New York, and Memphis.​

​Dr. Schultz is Assoc. Professor of English at the University of Memphis where she directs the Women's and Gender Studies Program and teaches courses in American, African American, and Afro-Diasporic literature and culture; poetry and poetics; and modernism. Schultz was also a faculty member for the “Don’t Deny My Voice: Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement” Institute, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities.​