Dr. Maryemma Graham is University Distinguished Professor Emerita, Department of English at the University of Kansas, and a 2021 recipient of an American Book Award lifetime achievement recognition for "outstanding literary excellence," highlighting the broad and lasting impact of her research, publishing, teaching, and public engagement through humanities-driven initiatives.
The Augusta, Georgia, native is the founder and 38-year director of the History of Black Writing (HBW), a digital archive established in 1983 at the University of Mississippi for the preservation and study of Black Literature. Graham’s extensive record of funding—over $3.5 million from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Ford, and Mellon Foundations —highlights the importance of her work in literary recovery, archival preservation, digital scholarship, as well as intergenerational and international networking and collaboration.
Spearheaded by HBW, her national and international collaborations include the Langston Hughes National Poetry Project, the Language Matters Teaching Initiative in partnership with the Toni Morrison Society, and the Black Book Interactive Project, a joint effort with AFRO-PWW at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which just released a first round of digital publications as HBW begins a new era at Indiana University.
Graham is largely responsible for the resurgence of interest in Margaret Walker due to her debut book publication How I Wrote Jubilee and Other Essays on Life and Literature (1990) and several related book publications on the author. While her investment in Walker is a defining aspect of her career, her literary output encompasses 15 books, hundreds of published articles, book chapters, introductions, interviews, commemorative editions, book reviews, and study guides. Widely known for her mentorship of students and for initiating collaborative projects, Graham remains highly invested in advocacy efforts, just as she redefined what we mean by “professional development” with her highly popular NEH-funded summer institutes that reached teachers and students throughout the US and abroad.
Graham is currently working on four books: The Cambridge History of the African American Novel, with Keith Gilyard (Cambridge), Margaret Walker’s South (University Press of Mississippi), Sister and Other Stories from Pine Country, and a memoir, School Teacher’s Daughter. She lives in Lawrence, KS, and, driven by a concern that reading has gone out of style, she is working with a community group in building a children’s library in the neighborhood where Langston Hughes grew up as a child.
Maryemma Graham
Ex Officio, HBW Founding Director, Distinguished Professor of English, University of Kansas
