Along with the memoirs Street Shadows (Bantam, 2010) and The World in Flames (Beacon, 2016), Jerald Walker is the author of How to Make a Slave and Other Essays (Mad Creek Books, 2020), a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award in Nonfiction. His work has appeared in publications such as Harvard Review, Creative Nonfiction, Iowa Review, and Mother Jones, and it has been widely anthologized, including five times in The Best American Essays series. A recipient of Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and a James A. Michener Fellowship, Walker is a professor of creative writing and African American literature at Emerson College.