Alessandra Di Maio is Associate Professor of English and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Palermo, Italy. She divides her time between Italy and the U.S., where she taught at several universities after earning her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research includes postcolonial, black, diasporic, migratory, gender studies and transnational cultural identities. She is currently working on a project on African Italian literature and the Black Mediterranean. She has been the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship, a UCLA Mellon postdoctoral fellowship, and a MacArthur Research and Writing Grant. Among her publications are Tutuola at the University. The Italian Voice of a Yoruba Ancestor (2000); An African Renaissance (2006); Wor(l)ds in Progress. A Study of Contemporary Migrant Writings (2008); and Dedica a Wole Soyinka (2012). She has translated into Italian Nuruddin Farah, Chris Abani, Caryl Phillips, and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka