American novelist
LaShonda Katrice Barnett (born 1974) is an American author, playwright, and former radio host. She has published short stories, edited books on African-American music, and written a trilogy of full-length plays.[1]
Her 2015 debut novel Jam on the Vine[2] received a Stonewall Book Award by the American Library Association (2016).[3] The novel courses the life of African American journalist Ivoe Williams. The book was named a finalist in the lesbian fiction category at the 2016 Lambda Literary Awards.[4]
Barnett's short fiction appears in numerous anthologies and in literary journals such as The Chicago Tribune's Printer's Row, Callaloo, Gemini Magazine, Guernica Magazine, S/N Review, The New Orleans Review, Foglilfter Journal, the Peacock Journal, and Amherst College's Common Literary Magazine, among other publications.
Biography
LaShonda Katrice Barnett was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1974.[5] She grew up, one of five children, in Park Forest, Illinois.
Barnett received a B.A. in English Language and Literature and Linguistics (with language specialization in German and Russian) from the University of Missouri and an M.A. in Women's History from Sarah Lawrence College.[6] She earned a Ph.D. in American Studies from the College of William & Mary.[1] Barnett has been a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority since 1994. She lives in Chicago.
She has held residencies at the Noepe Center for Literary Arts-Martha's Vineyard, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Fine Arts Work Center.[1] In 2015, she was twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize.[citation needed] She has taught at Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College, Brown University, Northwestern University and Syracuse University on history and literature of the African diaspora and Women's Studies.[1] A lover and scholar of black music, especially jazz, she hosted her own jazz program, Mapping Jazz, for WBAI (99.5 FM, NYC).[1]
In 2007, Barnett's personal interviews on creative process with women musicians resulted in the book I Got Thunder: Black Women Songwriters On Their Craft and Off The Record: Conversations With African American & Brazilian Women Musicians in 2015.
Barnett has received grants for her work from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities; and awards from the New York Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the College Language Association (for best short fiction).[1]
