Former J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Trudier Harris is a professor of English at the University of Alabama. She is the author, editor, or coeditor of twenty-three books, most recently The Scary Mason-Dixon Line: African American Writers and the South (a Choice Outstanding Academic Title), South of Tradition: Essays on African American Literature, and The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature.