Cheryl Clarke

Cheryl Clarke is a lesbian poet, essayist, educator and a Black feminist community activist: she lives in Jersey City, New Jersey and Hobart, New York. With her life partner, Barbara Balliet, she is co-owner of Bleinheim Hill Books, a used and rare bookstore in Hobart. Her younger sister is novelist Breena Clarke, with whom Clarke and Balliet organise the Hobart Festival of Women writers each summer. Her scholarship focuses on African American women’s literature, black lesbian feminism, an the Black Arts Movement in the United States. Retired from her work in higher education, she maintains a teaching affiliation with the Graduate Faculty of the Department of Women and Gender Studies, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and serves on the board of the Newark Pride Alliance.