Makuchi (pen name of Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi), a literary scholar, essayist, and creative writer, was born in Cameroon, educated at the University of Yaounde and McGill University, and is currently the Associate Dean of Faculty and Staff Development and Success in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at North Carolina State University. Her fiction publications include: Your Madness, Not Mine: Stories of Cameroon; The Sacred Door and Other Stories: Cameroon Folktales of the Beba and co-editor of Reflections: An Anthology of New Work by African Women Poets. Her short story “Woman of the Lake” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and “Land of My Dreams” earned honorable mention in the 2023 Best Short Story award category of the African Literature Association.
She is also Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature and a past president of the African Literature Association, who is widely published in her areas of research in African and African diaspora literatures, postcolonial literary and cultural studies, and in women and gender studies. She is the author of Gender in African Women’s Writing: Identity, Sexuality, and Difference and has guest edited special issues of journals such as JALA: Journal of the African Literature Association, Tydskrif vir Letterkunde: A Journal for African Literature, The Global South, and co-edited a special double issue of Journal des Africanistes.
Biography
Makuchi (pen name of Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi), a literary scholar, essayist, and creative writer, was born in Cameroon, educated at the University of Yaounde and McGill University, and is currently the Associate Dean of Faculty and Staff Development and Success in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at North Carolina State University.