Originally from Los Angeles, Cherene Sherrard is a poet, scholar, and essayist. She is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Vixen (2017) and Grimoire (2020), both from Autumn House Press; Dorothy West’s Paradise: A Biography of Class and Color; and other scholarly books on the Harlem Renaissance.

Her creative nonfiction and poetry have appeared in The Rumpus, Plume, The New York Times Magazine, The Journal, Terrain.org, Blackbird, Water~Stone Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She is Chair of the English Department at Pomona College, where she teaches African American and Caribbean literature.