Joann Quiñones is an Associate Professor of English at Earlham College. She received her BA from Rutgers University and MA and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. She specializes in African American, Caribbean and American Ethnic Literatures. A native New Yorker, she has lived in Richmond, IN for ten years and is a fiber artist and quilter. She shares her home with two teenage sons, two dogs and two cats. She is currently researching sugar cane workers from Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, her family’s traditional home and hopes the project will inspire a series of art quilts, poems and a novel about the connections between African Americans and Afro-Caribbean peoples.