Tolu Daniel is a Nigerian writer whose essays and short fiction have appeared in print and online publications. He was longlisted for the 2018 Koffi Addo Prize for Creative Nonfiction. Daniel lives in St. Louis, Missouri, where he is completing a PhD in comparative literature. Gerald Early is the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters in the African and African American Studies Department at Washington University in St. Louis, where he has taught since 1982. He was most recently the interim director of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Equity. He is a noted essayist and American culture critic. His essay collections include Tuxedo Junction: Essays on American Culture; The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture; This is Where I Came In: Essays on Black America in the 1960s; and, most recently, A Level Playing Field: African American Athletes and the Republic of Sports.