Emily Raboteau is an essayist, memoirist, and novelist. Her books include The Professor’s Daughter (Henry Holt) and Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora (Grove/Atlantic), named a best book of 2013 by The Huffington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle, a finalist for the Hurston Wright Legacy Award, and winner of a 2014 American Book Award.
Her publications include Best American Short Stories, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Tin House, The Guardian, Guernica, VQR, The Believer, Salon, Literary Hub, Buzzfeed, and elsewhere. Honors include a Pushcart Prize, The Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the MacDowell Colony. An avid world traveler, Raboteau resides in New York City and teaches Creative Writing in Harlem at City College, once known as “the poor man’s Harvard.”