Randall Kenan

Randall Kenan (1963-2020) was the author of a novel, A Visitation of Spirits; two works of nonfiction, Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century and The Fire This Time; and two collections of stories, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book, and most recently, If I Had Two Wings. He also edited and wrote the introduction for The Cross of Redemption: The Uncollected Writings of James Baldwin.

His awards included a Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the North Carolina Award, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Rome Prize. He was professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.