Allison Joseph

Allison Joseph was born in London, England, to Caribbean parents and grew up in Toronto and the Bronx. She earned a BA from Kenyon College and an MFA from Indiana University. Joseph is the author of many collections of poetry, including Confessions of a Barefaced Woman (2018); My Father’s Kites (2010); Voice: Poems (2009); Worldly Pleasures (2004); Imitation of Life (2003); In Every Seam (1997); Soul Train (1997); and What Keeps Us Here (1992), which won a John C. Zacharis First Book Award. Of her work, which frequently joins autobiography to cultural narratives and histories of Afro-Caribbean communities, Joseph has said, “I write to be a recorder, observer, participant, and sometimes, even judge. I want to engage the world as I see it with my whole self—all those different aspects of it.”

Joseph’s honors and awards include fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences and from the Illinois Arts Council. She is the recipient of a George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature from the Association of Writers & Writing Programs. The Judge Williams Holmes Cook Endowed Professor of English at Southern Illinois University, Joseph is editor of Crab Orchard Review, directs the MFA program, and runs the Young Writers Workshop, a summer program for high school students. She lives in Carbondale, Illinois.