Alexs D. Pate's debut novel Losing Absalom received a Minnesota Book Award and was named Best First Novel by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Additional novels include the New York Times best-seller Amistad, Finding Makeba, The Multicultiboho Sideshow, and West of Rehoboth. Pate, born in Philadelphia, now teaches at the University of Minnesota.
E. Ethelbert Miller was born in New York City in 1950. Author of 8 collections of poetry, he is the Founder and Director of the Ascension Poetry Reading Series and the director of the African American Resource Center at Howard University.