Calvin Baker is an American novelist, essayist, and editor from Chicago, now based in Brooklyn, NY. Baker attended the University of Chicago Lab Schools and graduated from Amherst College. His work chronicles the African American experience from the Colonial era to the present day. His first book, Naming the New World, was sold to Wyatt Books for St. Martin’s Press when he was 23, and he followed it with three others, Once Two Heroes, Dominion, and Grace. Esquire named Baker one of the best young writers in America (2005), and Dominion was a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Award and New York Newsday’s Best Book of the Year. Early in his career Baker worked as a journalist for the New Orleans Times-Picyune, Time Inc., and the Village Voice, and he later went on to teach English at Yale; the University of Leipzig, Germany; and Columbia University.
Portrait by Carol Dragon
