Dolen Perkins-Valdez is an American writer, best known for her debut novel '' Wench: A Novel'' (2010), which became a bestseller. She is Chair of the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation Board of Directors.

Early life and education

She attended

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher ...

as an undergraduate, earning a BA degree. She completed a PhD in English at

George Washington University , mottoeng = "God is Our Trust" , established = , type = Private federally chartered research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.8 billion (2022) , presi ...

Washington, DC ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morg ...

Career

Perkins-Valdez has published short fiction and essays in such magazines as '' The Kenyon Review'', ''

StoryQuarterly ''StoryQuarterly'' is an American literary journal based at Rutgers University–Camden in Camden, New Jersey. It was founded in 1975 by Tom Bracken, F.R. Katz, Pamela Painter and Thalia Selz. Works originally published in ''StoryQuarterly'' hav ...

'', '' StorySouth'', ''African American Review'', ''PMS: PoemMemoirStory'', ''North Carolina Literary Review'', ''Richard Wright Newsletter'', and ''SLI: Studies in Literary Imagination''. She is currently an Associate Professor at

American University The American University (AU or American) is a private federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. Its main campus spans 90 acres (36 ha) on Ward Circle, mostly in the Spring Valley neighborhood of Northwest D.C. AU was cha ...

in Washington, DC. Perkins-Valdez has said she was inspired to write her debut novel, ''Wench: A Novel'' (2010), after reading a biography of W.E.B. Dubois and coming across a brief reference to the founding of

Wilberforce University Wilberforce University is a private historically black university in Wilberforce, Ohio. Affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), it was the first college to be owned and operated by African Americans. It participates i ...

. It was noted as first being based at the buildings and grounds of a former, privately owned resort called Tawawa House, named for the "yellow springs" in the area. The iron-rich waters were thought to have medicinal value. Among the regular summer visitors to the Ohio resort in the antebellum period were Southern white planters and their enslaved mistresses of color. ''Wench'' features Lizzie, a young enslaved woman, and her complicated relationship with her master. It also explores the lives of three other mistresses of color, whom Lizzie comes to know at the resort. They are influenced by spending time in a free state, and seeing free people of color there. It was published by

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News C ...

in 2010 and in paperback the following year. The book received positive reviews and notice as a debut novel. The paperback edition became a bestseller. The novel was selected by NPR in 2010 as one of five books published that year that was recommended to book clubs, for "something to talk about".

Other works

In 2013, Perkins-Valdez was invited to write an introductory essay to the 37th edition of Solomon Northup's autobiography '' Twelve Years a Slave''. Her second novel, ''Balm: A Novel'', was published in May 2015. The novel is set in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

during the

Reconstruction Era The Reconstruction era was a period in American history following the American Civil War (1861–1865) and lasting until approximately the Compromise of 1877. During Reconstruction, attempts were made to rebuild the country after the bloo ...

. It explores a Tennessee black healer named Madge, who was born free; a white widowed spiritualist named Sadie; and a

freedman A freedman or freedwoman is a formerly enslaved person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, enslaved people were freed by manumission (granted freedom by their captor-owners), emancipation (granted freedom ...

called Hemp from Kentucky, who gained freedom by fighting with the Union Army. Each migrated to Chicago after the war, along with thousands of others working to rebuild their lives and to explore new kinds of freedom. Perkins-Valdez said that she wanted to "move the story out of the battlegrounds of the war into a place like Chicago ..taking it out of those traditional spaces such as the South or even thinking of Virginia or Pennsylvania... and putting it somewhere that was absolutely affected by the war but was still, in some ways, peripheral." Dolen's third novel Take My Hand will be published by Berkley Books/Penguin Random House in Spring 2022.

Honors

* 2002-2003, she was a president's postdoctoral fellow at the Center for African American Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. * 2009, finalist for the Robert Olen Butler Fiction Award. * 2011, finalist for two

NAACP Image Award The NAACP Image Awards is an annual awards ceremony presented by the U.S.-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP) to honor outstanding performances in film, television, theatre, music, and literature. Similar to ...

s and the

Hurston-Wright Legacy Award The Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards program honors Black writers in the United States and around the globe for literary achievement. Introduced in 2001, the Legacy Award was the first national award presented to Black writers by a national organizatio ...

for fiction, for her novel ''Wench'' * Perkins-Valdez received the First Novelist Award in 2011 for ''Wench'' by the Black Caucus of the

American Library Association The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with 49,727 members ...

. * She received a DC Commission on the Arts Grant to aid in completion of her second novel, ''Balm''.

Bibliography

*'' Wench: A Novel'' (2010) *'' Balm: A Novel'' (2015) *''Take My Hand'' (2022)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Perkins-Valdez, Dolen 21st-century American women writers Living people African-American novelists American women novelists American historical novelists Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American novelists Women historical novelists Harvard University alumni Columbian College of Arts and Sciences alumni Writers from Memphis, Tennessee Novelists from Tennessee University of Memphis alumni University of Mary Washington faculty University of Puget Sound faculty American University faculty and staff