Cherene Sherrard’s poetry collection Vixen takes to task the historical narratives and artistic mediums that have shaped racial and gender identity. She asks her readers to closely examine the hand that guides the pen, the photographer behind the lens, and the star on stage. In powerful, finely crafted lines, Sherrard’s poems interrupt and redirect the conversation. Sherrard’s voice-driven poems are accessible to any reader interested in work that examines racial and black female representation within a historical, cultural, and artistic framework.

Originally from Los Angeles, CHERENE SHERRARD currently resides in Madison, Wisconsin, where she teaches nineteenth- and twentieth-century American and African American literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a graduate of the Cave Canem Summer Workshops, a recipient of many fellowships and awards, and her fiction and poetry have been published in numerous anthologies and literary journals. Her poetry chapbook, Mistress Reclining (2010), won the New Women’s Voices Award.