Car­la Kaplan is Davis Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture at North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty. Her books include The Erotics of Talk and Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Let­ters, and edit­ed works by Hurston, Nel­la Larsen, and oth­ers. She has received fel­low­ships from the Guggen­heim Foun­da­tion, the New York Pub­lic Library, the W. E. B. Du Bois Insti­tute, and elsewhere.