LEON FORREST (1937-1997) was born in Chicago and taught at Northwestern University for more than two decades. His first novel, There Is a Tree More Ancient Than Eden, included an introduction by Ralph Ellison and was edited by Toni Morrison, who also worked with Forrest on two subsequent novels, The Bloodworth Orphans and Two Wings to Veil My Face. Originally published in 1992, Forrest's masterpiece, DivineDays, was inspired by James Joyce's Ulysses and hailed as "boldly musical" by the New York Times and "dazzling" by Publishers Weekly. Meteor in the Madhouse, a series of connected novellas narrated by Joubert Jones, was published posthumously by TriQuarterly Books in 2011, and Forrest was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame in 2013. His papers are held at the McCormick Library of Special Collections and University Archives at Northwestern University.

KENNETH W. WARREN is the University of Chicago Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor. He is the author of What Was African American Literature?, So Black and Blue: Ralph Ellison and the Occasion of Criticism, and Black and White Strangers: Race and American Literary Realism.

ZACHARY PRICE is the grandson of Leon Forrest.