Courtney Thorsson

Courtney Thorsson is an author and associate professor in the English Department at the University of Oregon, where she teaches, studies, and writes about African American literature from its beginnings to the present.

Her newest book, THE SISTERHOOD: How a Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture, tells the story of how a remarkable community of African American women writers including Alice Walker, June Jordan, Vertamae Grosvenor, and Toni Morrison, transformed American writing and cultural institutions. THE SISTERHOOD was written with the support of a Public Scholars Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The Sisterhood “is an indispensable, fascinating, and original history and one that might have been lost without Thorsson’s loving and meticulous archival work.” -Mary Helen Washington, author of The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s

Thorsson’s first book, WOMEN’S WORK: Nationalism and Contemporary African American Women’s Novels, argues that Toni Cade Bambara, Paule Marshall, Gloria Naylor, Ntozake Shange, and Toni Morrison reclaim and revise cultural nationalism in their novels of the 1980s and 90s.

Her writings appear in Callaloo; African American Review; MELUS; Gastronomica; Foodscapes: Food, Space, and Place in a Global Society; Contemporary Literature; and Public Books.

Photo credit: Livia Fremouw

A woman in a blue jacket standing next to a tree.
    

Praise for THE SISTERHOOD

“Starting with a photograph, Courtney Thorsson brings her all to this luminous work about The Sisterhood, a group of Black women writers who met informally in the 1970s. Together they transformed American literature and helped to shape generations of writers, visual artists, filmmakers, and scholars. This is a profoundly important story and it has found an astute and sensitive author in Thorsson.” – Farah Jasmine Griffin, author of In Search of a Beautiful Freedom: New and Selected Essays

“Proceeding from an archive of one iconic photograph of The Sisterhood, 1977, Courtney Thorsson has pieced together the story of how Black women writers, in intimate and collaborative gatherings throughout New York in the 1970s, created literary history. It is an indispensable, fascinating and original history and one that might have been lost without Thorsson’s loving and meticulous archival work.” – Mary Helen Washington, author of The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the photograph that inspired Courtney Thorsson’s immensely perceptive The Sisterhood should be valued in the millions. The Black women who made up The Sisterhood represented the greatest creative minds of the last half century. Today we see them as literary ‘Super Friends,’ but back in 1977 many were struggling artists whose friendship, generosity, and support for one another enabled them all to fly. And the literary, cultural, political, and academic worlds we now inhabit are better for it.” – Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original

“A fascinating, empowering look at how Black women writers collaborated to move their own needle in the publishing industry and academia.” – Library Journal

“Richly detailed . . . A well-documented contribution to Black literary history.” – Kirkus Reviews

Books, Films & Projects

Clips

Courtney Thorsson speaks about her new book, THE SISTERHOOD, and the photo that inspired it.

Courtney Thorsson speaks about her book, WOMEN'S WORK: Nationalism and Contemporary African American Women’s Novels.

News

THE SISTERHOOD: How a Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture is an Amazon #1 New Release!