Tracy Floreani : Author, editor, culture worker, bibliophile

Tracy Floreani has been an avid reader and writer since childhood and always knew her career would center on books. When she accepted a teaching position at Oklahoma City University in 2010, she got involved in developing the city’s public commemorations of its most famous novelist, Ralph Ellison, which led her to more work in Ellison studies and public humanities activities beyond the university. She found herself drawn to the unheard story of Ralph Ellison’s spouse Fanny and wondered what her life had been like, beyond the brief mentions in biographies of her famous husband. She soon began work in the archives to excavate the lesser known—but no less fascinating— story of the woman who lived with Ellison as he wrote Invisible Man. Tracy is past President of the Society for the Study of the Multiethnic Literature of the U.S. (MELUS) and currently lives in Oklahoma City, where she writes in the study of her dreams tucked away at the back of a quirky midcentury house.