Dr. Salamishah Tillet
Dr. Salamishah Tillet is a critic, scholar, and activist based in Newark, New Jersey. As a critic, she has contributed to the New York Times since 2015, commenting on gender, sexuality, race, popular culture, and politics. She is the author of “In Search of the Color Purple” (2021), and “Sites of Slavery” (2012).
Dr. Tillet received a Bachelor of Arts in English and African American Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, a Masters of Art in Teaching in English from Brown University, and a Masters of Art in English and American Literature and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Harvard University. She is currently the Henry Rutgers Professor of Creative Writing and African American and African Studies at Rutgers University - Newark. In 2020, Salamishah was awarded the Whiting Creative NonFiction grant for her work in progress, “All the Rage: “Mississippi Goddam” and the World Nina Simone Made.”
Among other projects as an activist, Professor Tillet is the founder and director of New Arts Justice at Express Newark, defined as an incubator “committed to Black feminist approaches to art’s relationship to place, social justice, and civic engagement in Newark and beyond.” Dr. Salamishah Tillet and her sister Scheherazade Tillet are the co-founders of A Long Walk Home, a Chicago-based national non-profit that aims to “empower young artists and activists to end violence against all girls and women.”
Dr. Tillet wrote, “Let us be ourselves now” an essay that introduces “A Womb of Violet: Volume II” by commenting on the previous collection, “A Womb of Violet: An Anthology” (2019), the inspiration behind the collective of Black women artists and activists and the inspiration for the Volume II, Audre Lorde. Dr. Tillet states: “As we invoke the past, we are still defiantly of this moment of racial reckoning and gender justice. Today, we call ourselves “A Womb of Violet 2,” and live on these pages as a tapestry of Black feminism that will carry us all to a better tomorrow.”
You can learn more about her at salamishah.com