Joyce Ashuntantang (Joyce Ash) is a poet, actress, interdisciplinary scholar, and Professor of English at the University of Hartford, Connecticut. A graduate of universities on three continents, Dr. Ashuntantang received a BA in English with a minor in Theater Arts from the University of Yaoundé, Cameroon, a Master’s in Library and Information Science from the University of Aberystwyth, UK, and a Ph.D. in English/African Literature from the City University of New York. She is the author of many scholarly and creative publications, which include Landscaping Postcoloniality: The Dissemination of Cameroon Anglophone Literature (2009), Routledge Handbook of Minority Discourses in African Literature, coedited (2020), and four poetry collections, Their Champagne Party Will End: Poems in Honor of Bate Besong, coedited (2008), A Basket of Flaming Ashes (2010), Beautiful Fire (2018, Arabic trans. 2024) and Bearing Witness, coedited (2020). Beautiful Fire won the prestigious African Literature Association (USA) Book of the Year Award – Creative Writing (2020).

She has appeared as an invited poet in many countries worldwide, including England, Germany, Nicaragua, Greece, Costa Rica, Colombia, Bangladesh, Cameroon, and the USA.