Robert G. O’Meally is the Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he founded The Center for Jazz Studies. He is the author of The Craft of Ralph Ellison, Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday, and The Jazz Singers; principal writer for the The Smithsonian Institution’s exhibition catalogue, Seeing Jazz; editor of The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, and of several other volumes, including three Barnes and Noble classics by Melville, Douglass, and Mark Twain. He co-edited The Norton Anthology of Afro-American Literature, History and Memory in African-American Culture, and Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies. His articles on literature, music, and visual art have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, Callaloo, and The American Scholar. He has won awards for his liner notes and for his work as writer for the PBS documentary based on his book on Billie Holiday. For his co-production of a Smithsonian record set called The Jazz Singers, he was nominated for a Grammy Award. His new book is Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey—the catalogue essay for an exhibition of the artist’s collages based on Homer.