Sandra Jackson-Opoku

Sandra Jackson-Opoku is a poet, novelist, screenwriter, and journalist. Her novels include The River Where Blood Is Born (1997), which won an American Library Association Black Caucus Literary Award, and Hot Johnny (and the Women Who Loved Him) (2001). With Quraysh Ali Lansana, she edited Revise the Psalm: Work Celebrating the Writing of Gwendolyn Brooks (2017). Jackson-Opoku’s own writing on the cultures of the African diaspora has been published widely.

Jackson-Opoku is the recipient of honors and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, and the American Antiquarian Society. She won the CCLM/General Electric Fiction Award for Younger Writers. On faculty at Chicago State University, Jackson-Opaku has taught for institutions and organizations such as Columbia College Chicago, the University of Miami, Nova Southeastern University, the Writer’s Studio at the University of Chicago, the North Country Institute for Writers of Color, and the Hurston/Wright Writers Workshop. She lives in Chicago.