John Keene is a published poet, fiction writer, essayist, critic, and translator. A longtime member of the Dark Room Writers Collective of Cambridge and Boston, a graduate fellow of Cave Canem, and a board member of the African Poetry Book Series, he teaches in the English and African American and African Studies Departments, and the MFA program, at Rutgers University in Newark. He is the author of Annotations, and Counternarratives, both published by New Directions, as well as several other works, including the poetry collection Seismosis, with artist Christopher Stackhouse, and a translation of Brazilian author Hilda Hilst's novel, Letters from a Seducer.