Dolen Perkins-Valdez - Wench

The land and surrounding area were sold to the cincinnati conference of the Methodist Episcopal church, and it established the Ohio African University in 1856. With the onset of the civil War, enrollments declined and the original campus was closed. In 1863, the property was purchased by the African Methodist Episcopal Chuch and was renamed Wilberforce University; it continues to be the nation’s oldest, private, predominantly African American university. It is believed that the children of the unions between the slave women and the slaveholders were among the early students at the university.

I did not do this alone. Many people helped. Thank you to those who helped with research: Michaela hammer, my student research assistant; University of Puget Sound for research funds and the Mellon Sabbatical; Jacqueline Y. Brown at Wilberforce Stokes Library; Elizabeth L. Plummer at Ohio historical Society; Gwenyth G. Haney at Dayton history; Peggy Burge at Collins Library. Thank you to Bread Loaf and Tin house Writers conferences. Thank you to my manuscript readers Colleen McElroy, Kathryn Ma, and Kirsten Menger-Anderson. Thank you to my mentors for unflagging support: James A. Miller, Randall Kenan, Richard Yarborough, Tayari Jones, Helena Maria Viramontes, Lawrence Jackson, Hans Ostrom. Thank you to my sister, Jeanna McClure, for inspiration. Thank you to my agent Stephanie Cabot, and her colleague, Sarah Burnes. I am grateful for the opportunity you gave me. Thank you to my editor, Dawn Davis, for patient guidance. Thanks, again, to my parents who always encouraged my love for books.

Finally, thanks to my best friend and husband, David, for sharing me with this book and these characters for these last few years. Your intellect and honest feedback kept me going when I faltered. And for my little Elena, who taught me what Lizzie’s love for her children meant to her.

DOLEN PERKINS-VALDEZ’s fiction and essays have appeared in The Kenyon Review, African American Review, North Carolina Literary Review, and the Richard Wright Newsletter. Born and raised in Memphis, a graduate of Harvard, and a former University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow, Perkins-Valdez teaches creative writing at the University of Puget Sound. She splits her time between Washington, D.C. and Seattle, Washington. This is her first novel.