About
An outgrowth of the popular “live” Critical Caribbean Feminisms series, which since 2015 has brought together established and emerging writers from the Caribbean and its diasporas, WRITING HOME is an ode to the Americas very literally writ large. Each episode features an exceptional contemporary cultural actor in conversation with hosts Kaiama L. Glover and Tami Navarro and aims to trace the geographies of resistance that ground our feminist practices of diaspora. The beauty, humor, and hope that animate these encounters are a welcome antidote to the heartbreak of the present moment.
Meet The Team
Kaiama L. Glover is Ann Whitney Olin Professor of French and Africana Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of A Regarded Self: Caribbean Womanhood and the Ethics of Disorderly Being and of Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon, among other publications, and she is the prize-winning translator of several works of Haitian prose fiction. Kaiama is currently at work on an intellectual biography titled, “For the Love of Revolution: René Depestre and the Poetics of a Radical Life.” Kaiama has been awarded grants from the PEN/Heim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, and the New York Public Library Cullman Center. She has written regularly for the New York Times Book Review and has appeared as a host on PBS show History Detectives: Special Investigations.
photo credit | Nazenet Habtezghi
Tami Navarro is an Assistant Professor of Pan-African Studies at Drew University. She is the author of Virgin Capital: Race, Gender, and Financialization in the US Virgin Islands (SUNY Press 2021). Tami is trained as a cultural anthropologist, and her work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the American Anthropological Association, the Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She serves on the Board of the St. Croix Foundation and is a member of the Editorial Board for the journal Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism. Tami is the co-host of the podcast, “Writing Home: American Voices from the Caribbean” and a founding member of the Virgin Islands Studies Collective.
photo credit | Nicole Y. Canegata
Rachel James is an LA-bred, NYC-based screenwriter, director, and content creative. She is the Associate Director of IMATS and the Media Center at Barnard College. Rachel received her MFA in Screenwriting from Columbia University’s School of the Arts, and holds a BFA in Film/Video from California Institute of the Arts. Rachel was featured on the 2019 Young & Hungry list. Her feature film screenplay THE SWELLS was on the 2019 Black List and the Hit List, and is in development with Assemble Media. Rachel also produces the ‘Positively Gotham Gal’ Podcast.
photo credit | Bianca Catbagan
Miriam Neptune is the Associate Director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women. Miriam’s upbringing as the child of Haitians who were exiled by the Duvalier dictatorship informs her work as a documentary filmmaker. Her video collage piece and essay “In Search of A Name” (Danticat, 2001) explores the perils of navigating diaspora Haitian identity in the US. Miriam worked for several years as the communications coordinator for Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees, creating videos focused on race, migration, and xenophobia in the Americas. Her piece “Birthright Crisis” chronicling anti-Haitian policy and violence in the Dominican Republic, won a Paul Robeson Award for Social Change Media. As an academic librarian, Miriam curates pop-up installations like Undesign the Redline and the Black Unicorn Project, creating spaces within libraries to address histories of anti-blackness and exclusion through collective narrative making. Through the Digital Humanities Center and in partnership with the activist organizations We Are All Dominican and Reconoci.do, she is leading the collective translation of Nos Cambia La Vida, an anthology of autobiographical narratives by Dominicans of Haitian Descent which will be released as a bilingual (Spanish/English) open educational resource in 2021.
Liberty Martin is a writer and broadcaster from the London borough of Croydon and holds a B.A. in comparative literature and Caribbean studies from Columbia University in the City of New York. In addition to being the administrative director for WRITING HOME, she is an editorial assistant for the Caribbean literary journal Small Axe. Liberty seeks to center the African diaspora in her projects, such as the podcast that she co-hosts, “Lose Your Sister,” and her WBAR radio show, “HOMESICK,” which explored Black British music. Constantly honing her craft, Liberty also enjoys writing fiction and poetry in her free time and is interested in work in archives, political education, and the cultural sector. Liberty has worked with the Economist Educational Foundation, the Financial Times, the Black Cultural Archives, the Columbia University Anthropology Department, and the Barnard College Digital Humanities Center, amongst other publications and organizations.
photo credit | Soorim Lee
Mila Rahim is a Sophomore at Barnard College studying their undergraduate degree in Education. Rahim discusses analyzing theory through educational texts on their podcast Black Sheep, which is supported by the Center for Engaged Pedagogy at Barnard College. Rahim also has worked on previous podcast projects such as The Mind is Infinite, that discusses controversial political topics from the perspective of a Black Queer student in the South. This is Rahim’s first season working with Writing Home.
photo credit | Milly Hopkins
