An avid reader and writer since childhood, Tracy Floreani loves to share books and writing with students and public audiences. 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 more public humanities activities beyond the university. As the spouse of a sometimes-frustrated artist, she found herself drawn to Ellison’s spouse Fanny and 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 currently serves as the President of the Society for the Study of the Multiethnic Literature of the U.S. (MELUS) and lives in Oklahoma City, where she writes in the study of her dreams tucked away at the back of a quirky midcentury house.