I received my PhD in English Literature from the University of York. I joined the University of Manchester in 2012 having previously taught at the University of York and Staffordshire University, and stints teaching young offenders, refugees, and asylum seekers.

I am the author of three books on James Baldwin, the most recent of which is Walking in the Dark: James Baldwin, My Father, and Me (MUP, 2024). I am the editor, or co-editor, of books on American Cold War Culture, the poet Harold Norse, the film The Birth of a Nation, the writer James Baldwin, and two books by the British polymath Jeff Nuttall:  five of his novellas, and the 50^th anniversary edition of Bomb Culture. I have guest-edited journal special issues on Baldwin, William Blake, and, most recently, The Mimeograph Revolution: Little Poetry Magazines and the Avant-garde (Textual Practice, 2024).

I am chair of Manchester University Press's editorial committee, a founding editor of James Baldwin Review, and a series editor for The British Pop Archive trade imprint. In addition to academic publications, my writing has appeared in the Guardian, Beat Scene, Byline Times, Literary Hub, Poetry Foundation, Big Issue, Literary Review, and International Times. I am a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement. 

I have mostly written about twentieth century US literature and culture, including publications on American cold war culture, JFK, Harold Norse, Jack Kerouac, Zora Neale Hurston, Tom Waits, William Burroughs, D.W. Griffith, film noir, and jazz and Pentecostalism. My work has appeared in journals including English Literary History, African American Review, Literature and Theology, and Callaloo, as well as in a number of edited volumes. 

I have a longstanding interest in 1960s transatlantic counterculture, avant-garde writing, & little poetry magazines, which has led to work on Jeff Nuttall, William Blake's influence on the counterculture of the 1960s, and on the 'Mimeograph Revolution' that took place between the 1950s and 1970s.  My reviews in the Times Literary Supplement reflect my broad interests. I have written about 19th, 20th and 21st century American literature and culture (literary criticism,  literary biographies, poetry, cultural criticism, fiction, and memoirs), British fiction and British poetry,  as well as nine freelance essays on topics ranging from breaking into James Baldwin's house to living on a boat. 

James Baldwin

Over the last fifteen years my research has focussed on the American writer James Baldwin (1924-1987). In 2009 I edited A Historical Guide to James Baldwin (Oxford UP), a volume that explores the writer’s relationship to the civil rights movement, transatlantic culture, music, religion, and Black queer writing, followed by the book James Baldwin (2011) for the series Writers and their Work. I co-edited (with Rich Blint) a special issue on Baldwin for African American Review (2013).

My monograph, All Those Strangers: The Art  and Lives of James Baldwin was published by Oxford UP in 2015. The book analyses the writer’s life and work against the radically transformative politics of his time, as well as exploring under-researched areas in Baldwin’s life and work—his relationship to the Left, his FBI files and the significance of Africa in his writing—while also contributing to wider discussions about post-war US culture. The book was reviewed in the New York Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement &  African American Review.

In 2014 I co-founded James Baldwin Review with Justin Joyce and Dwight McBride (both at Washington University in St. Louis). The journal is open access and can be viewed here.

Between 2024-7 I will be working as the principal investigator on "James Baldwin and Britain" with Rob Waters (Queen Mary, University of London) and Kennetta Perry (Northwestern University). The AHRC-funded project explores Baldwin's complicated relationship to Britain, and to British culture. More details will appear as the project develops.

Recent and Current Research