Kansas City native LaShonda Katrice Barnett grew up in Park Forest, Illinois. Editor of I Got Thunder: Black Women Songwriters On Their Craft (2007) and Off the Record: Conversations With African American and Brazilian Women Musicians (2015), and author of a story collection (1999), she has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the New York Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the College Language Association, among others. In 2014, her short stories appeared in The Chicago Tribune, Guernica Magazine, New Orleans Review, SN Review, Juked, Gemini Magazine and elsewhere. She is twice-nominated for the 2015 Pushcart prize. Barnett is a graduate of the University of Missouri, Sarah Lawrence College, and the College of William and Mary, where she earned a B.A., M.A. in Women's History and the Ph.D. in American Studies, respectively. Her debut novel, Jam on the Vine, was published by Grove Atlantic in 2015.
