Michael Simanga is co-editor-in-chief. He came of age in the Black Power and Black Arts movement. He is an activist, writer, artist, and teaches Africana studies at Morehouse College in Atlanta.
Dr. Clarissa Myrick-Harris White is co-editor-in-chief. She is a Professor of Africana Studies at Morehouse College, co-founder of the college’s Black Men’s Research Institute, and advisor to the National Center for Civil and Human Rights and APEX Museum. In the 1990s and early 2000s, she co-founded two independent publishing ventures: The Black Resource Center and OneWorldArchives. Her research focuses on the intersection of race, class, culture, and gender, especially during the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. The scholar earned a BA in English from Morris Brown College, MA in Journalism from The Ohio State University, and PhD in African American Studies from Emory University.
Brittney M. Edmonds is an associate editor. She is Assistant Professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research focuses on Black literary and cultural production after 1945, with special attention to African American satire, humor, and the political work of literary form. Her writing has appeared in journals such as American Literary History, African American Review, MELUS, and Post45: Contemporaries, among others. She is co-editing two forthcoming projects: The Oxford Handbook of African American Humor Studies and a special issue of African American Review titled “Black Literature+: Reading African American Literature in Dialogue with the Other Arts.”
Shoniqua Roach is an associate editor. She is Assistant Professor of Black Feminist Theory and Queer Studies at Brandeis University. Her work appears in American Quarterly, boundary 2, differences, and The Black Scholar, among other venues. Roach’s forthcoming book, Black Dwelling: Home-Making and Erotic Freedom, theorizes black domestic spaces as tragic sites of state invasion and Black feminist enactments of erotic freedom. Roach has received many awards and fellowships, including those from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Ford Foundation.
Opal Gay, PhD, is a book reviews editor. They are a social psychologist and Assistant Professor in the Black Studies Department at City College of New York (CUNY). Their research centering Black queer and transgender health has appeared in journals such as Psychology & Sexuality, Journal of Bisexuality, and The International Journal of Transgender Health. As well, Opal is a Sadler Scholar at The Hastings Center, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholars alumna, and a 2024 Peoples’ Response Fellow with The Movement for Black Lives.
Joshua K. Reason (they/them) is a book reviews editor. They are a transdisciplinary scholar-artist from the Bay Area. Their work details Black : Indigenous performing and visual arts in the Americas as rehearsals for freedom beyond the limitations of modernity. Through ethnography, performance studies, cultural studies, and geography, they write and create towards new grammars for sexuality, intimacy, desire, and erotics. Their book project, tentatively titled After Dark: Sexual Ecologies of North-Northeast Brazil, is a multimodal ethnography of Black : Indigenous LGBTQIA+ artists whose creative practices intervene in (neo)colonialism, sexual conservatism, and climate catastrophe.
Shannon Hanks-Mackey is the Production and Operations Manager for TBS. Shannon studied Comparative Literature and Film Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Active Board
Advisory Board
Senior Editor Emeritus: Robert Allen
Founding Editor: Robert Chrisman
Editor-in-Chief Emerita: Laura Chrisman
Editor-in-Chief Emeritus: Louis Chude-Sokei
