Ed Pavlić (Ph.D. Indiana University) is the Distinguished Research Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Georgia. Affiliated faculty in Creative Writing, author of eight collections of poetry, three critical studies, and a novel, he twice served as Director of the Creative Writing Ph.D. Program in English (2006-2011, 2015-2017). His most recent books are: Let It Be Broke (Four Way Books, 2020) a collection of poems focused upon racial dynamics in contemporary life; Another Kind of Madness (Milkweed Editions, 2019), a novel set in Chicago and coastal Kenya and tuned to the sound and structure of soul music, especially the songs of Chaka Khan; Live at the Bitter End (Saturnalia Books, 2018); Let’s Let That Are Not Yet : Inferno (National Poetry Series, Fence Books, 2015) and ‘Who Can Afford to Improvise?’: James Baldwin and Black Music, the Lyric and the Listeners (Fordham University Press, 2015). Other recent works are Visiting Hours at the Color Line (National Poetry Series, Milkweed Editions, 2013), But Here Are Small Clear Refractions (Achebe Center, 2009, Kwani? Trust, 2013) and Winners Have Yet to be Announced: A Song for Donny Hathaway (U Georgia P, 2008). His other books are Paraph of Bone & Other Kinds of Blue (APR-Honickman/Copper Canyon, 2001), Crossroads Modernism: Descent and Emergence in African American Literary Culture (U Minnesota Press, 2002), and Labors Lost Left Unfinished (UPNE/Sheep Meadow Press, 2006).
Forthcoming books include: Outward in Larger Terms: Adrienne Rich’s Expanding Solitudes, A Radical Geography (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), a study of the poet’s career; “No Time to Rest: James Baldwin’s Life in Letters to His Brother David,” a retelling of Baldwin’s life and career based upon 33 years of letters he wrote to his youngest brother and closest confidant; and “Like I Was Ink,” a memoir exploring the intimate tangle of race and identity in the American experience.