Jewell Parker Rhodes is a Professor of Creative Writing and American Literature at Arizona State
University and an affiliate faculty of ASU's Women's Studies Program. She has served as Director of the
Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Arizona State University (1996-1999).
Her novel, Voodoo Dreams, (St. Martin’s Press/Picador USA) was selected for the Barnes and Noble
“Discover Series” and received a rare diamond from Kirkus Reviews and a star from Booklist (American
Library Association). Voodoo Dreams has been featured in Quality Paperback Book Club, published in
England by Hodder-Headline, translated into German for Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag and into Italian for
Sperling Kupfer Publishers. A staged reading of her play "Voodoo Dreams" (based upon her novel) was
produced by the Institute for the Study of the Arts at Arizona State University in February 2001.
Rhodes's second novel, Magic City, was published in hardcover and paperback by HarperCollins
Publishers; book club rights were sold to Doubleday/Literary Guild. The Chicago Tribune selected Magic
City as one of its favorite books of 1997; its reviewer said the novel “gleams with clarity and with vivid—
yet succinct metaphors. With Magic City, Rhodes has captured many truths, refining the crusted raw
materials of history into a luminous work.”
Rhodes's writing text, Free Within Ourselves: Fiction Lessons for Black Authors, (Main Street Books:
Doubleday) was published in October 1999 and subsequently published by Quality Paperback Book Club.
The African American Guide to Writing and Publishing Non-Fiction (Main Street Books: Doubleday) was
recently published in January 2002.
Rhodes's latest novel, Douglass's Women, will be published by Pocket Books in October 2002.
Her short fiction has been anthologized in Children of the Night: Best Short Stories By Black Writers,
edited by Gloria Naylor (Little Brown, 1996), in Ancestral House: The Black Short Story in the Americas
and Europe, edited by Charles Rowell (Westview Press/Harper Collins, 1995), and in African Americans
in the West: A Century of Short Stories, ed. Glasrud and Champion (University Press of Colorado, 2000).
Her most recent essay, "Mixed Blood Stew" will appear in Creative Nonfiction in 2002. Her essays and
short fiction have appeared in Between Mothers and Sons: Women Writers Writing About Their Sons,
edited by Pat Stevens, the Oxford American, Callaloo, Calyx, The Seattle Review, Feminist Studies,
CITYAZ, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and in the McDougal-Little: The Language of Literature, among others.
Rhodes has also served as co-editor for the D.C. Heath Middle Level Literature Series for sixth, seventh,
and eighth graders (publisher, D.C. Heath & Co., 1995).
Rhodes was commissioned to write the narrative story line and two songs ("Rain, Rain, Come Again,” and
“Water”) with composer Ken LaFave for the production, “Water Rhythms.” The production employed the
talents of the Phoenix Boys Choir,Young Sounds of Arizona, and Dance Action. The premiere was
November 15, 2001 at the Orpheum Theater in Phoenix.
She has received a Yaddo Creative Writing Fellowship, the National Endowment of the Arts Award in
Fiction She has been awarded the California State University Distinguished Teaching Award. At Arizona
State University, she has been awarded the Dean’s Quality Teaching Award, Outstanding Thesis Director
from the Honors College, and the Outstanding Faculty Award from the College of Extended Education.
She has served as Creative Writing Delegate for the Modern Language Association and is a member of
the Arizona Women's Forum/International Women's Forum.
She has also served as writer-in-residence for such institutions and organizations as Trinity College in
Conneticut, Alma College in Michigan, the Mid-Atlantic Creative Nonfiction Conference at Goucher
College in Maryland, the Hurston-Wright Literary Foundation Conference at Howard University, and the
National Writer's Voice Project in Arizona, among many others.
She received a Bachelor of Arts in Drama Criticism, a Master of Arts in English, and a Doctor of Arts in
English (Creative Writing) from Carnegie-Mellon University.