About

Chiyuma (Chi) Elliott’s scholarly work and teaching focus is on African American literature (particularly the Harlem Renaissance) and poetry and poetics. She is the author of The Rural Harlem Renaissance (forthcoming, Oxford University Press) and four books of poetry, most recently Blue in Green (University of Chicago Press, 2021). She has received fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, Cave Canem, the Stegner program at Stanford, and the Vermont Studio Center. Chi is co-PI of the African American Intellectual Traditions Initiative and co-host of the podcast Old-School, which celebrates the intersections of African American studies and the classics. A high school career aptitude test said she should be a nuclear or petroleum engineer, but Chi is happiest when reading and writing poems, or slogging through documents from the 1920s and 1930s (because poetry and historical research sometimes feel like portals to other times and places). She completed her PhD in American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin and her MFA in Creative Writing at Warren Wilson College.