Cheryl Clarke is a poet and essayist. She is the author of four books of poetry, Narratives: poems in the tradition of black women (1982), Living as a Lesbian (1986), Humid Pitch (1989), Experimental Love (1993), the critical study, After Mecca: Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement (Rutgers Press, 2005), and The Days of Good Looks: Prose and Poetry 1980-2005 (Carroll and Graf, 2006). She is at work on a new manuscript of poems, By My Precise Haircut. She is currently serving as a Dean of Students at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. Her writing has been published in numerous journals, anthologies, and magazines.