Dr. Deborah G. Plant

Deborah G. Plant is an African American Literature and Africana Studies Independent Scholar and literary critic specializing in the life and works of Zora Neale Hurston. She is editor of Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” (2018), a New York Times Bestseller, by Zora Neale Hurston. Author of Alice Walker: A Woman for Our Times (2017). She is also editor of The Inside Light: New Critical Essays on Zora Neale Hurston (2010); and author of Zora Neale Hurston: A Biography of the Spirit (2007) and Every Tub Must Sit On Its Own Bottom (1995). And the forthcoming Of Greed and Glory (HarperCollins-Amistad Press).

She holds a BA from Southern University, and MA from Atlanta University, and MA and Ph. D. degrees in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She was instrumental in founding the University of South Florida Department of Africana Studies and chaired the department for five years.