BIOGRAPHY |
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Dr. Jamie Walker is a literary activist and filmmaker. Her research background is in African American History as well as African American and Caribbean Literature. Walker's scholarly work and film projects focus on the intersections of gender, race, class, and sexuality. Additionally, the courses she teaches on the collegiate level focus on the intersections of gender, race, class, and sexuality. Walker has been teaching African American history and writing for over 15 years. Her scholarship (while saturated in African American history) is influenced by feminist theory and psychology. Her students have published with local newspapers and magazines. Additionally, they have participated in Alternative Spring Break Programs and worked with local community activist programs, which are committed to social justice and change. Walker's students have also been actively engaged in voter registration drives, raising funding for and helped to re-build New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. They have also created their own short films, chronicling diverse, marginalized, or disenfranchised communities, and have gone on to pursue Graduate work in a wide array of fields.
Walker is President and CEO of J.D. Publishing Group, LLC, a media arts project that produces films, books, and arts based projects for women of color. Originally from Oakland, California, Walker has a B.A. (magna cum laude) from San Francisco State University, where she studied Theater Arts and Black Studies. She also has a Masters and Ph.D. (both with distinction) in African American and Caribbean Literature from Howard University. Walker was not only a Gifted & Honors student throughout elementary, junior, and high school, having participated in Upward Bound programs at Merritt College and U.C. Berkeley, but she also remained on the Dean's list every semester in college.
Featured on a CNN panel in 2004 (along with Ruby Dee, the late Ossie Davis, David Driskell, and Esther Cooper Jackson), Walker has toured and served on panels with numerous writers. Her feature stories have graced the covers of The New York Amsterdam News, The Washington Informer, The Afro-American, The Tennessee Tribune, and The San Francisco Bayview. Her work has also been featured in The San Francisco Examiner, Women in the Moon, The Oakland Tribune, Mosaic, Rhapsody, The African American Literature Book Club Online, The New Poet's Revolutionary Magazine, BMa: The Sonia Sanchez Literary Review, The Quarterly Black Review, and Sable Literary magazine, which is published in London. Walker served as the first trade book buyer for The Howard University Bookstore, building the trade section of the bookstore from the ground up. There, she helped increase sales and worked to introduce emerging poets and writers to the general public. Walker worked for several years in the Marketing & Editorial Department of The Howard University Press, where she assisted the director, D. Kamili Anderson. Walker helped to resurrect over 100 out-of-print titles through an innovative On Demand project while scheduling literary events for authors, writing press releases, and solely designing the HU Press website. In Washington, D.C., Walker also assisted Janet Sims-Wood, former librarian, at the historic Moorland Spingarn Research Library, helping to fill gaps within the library's collection.
Praised for her “superior skill in research,” Walker was selected out of thirty scholars across the United States by both Camille Cosby (wife to Bill Cosby) and Renee Poussaint to join the first class of students in The National Visionary Heritage Fellowship Program. The program taught Walker how to perform videotaped documentaries of historic "visionary" elders over the age of 70. Walker’s chosen "visionary" elder was Esther Cooper Jackson," co-founder of Freedomways magazine in 1961 with W.E.B. and Shirley Graham Du Bois.
Freedomways magazine chronicled the Civil Rights-Black Arts Movement and featured several well-known Black writers, poets, and artists, including Elizabeth Catlett, Paul Robeson, Angela Davis, Mari Evans, and Ntozake Shangé. Walker's documentary work produced with The National Visionary Leadership Project is now archived at The Smithsonian and featured in a book called A Wealth of Wisdom: Legendary African American Elders Speak (Atria Books 2004), which is edited by Camille Cosby and Renee Poussaint, respectfully.
Walker's essays and poetry are published in Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art (Third World Press 2002), edited by Tony Medina and Samiya Bashir; It Doesn’t Take a Genius: Five Truths to Inspire Success in Every Student (McGraw-Hill 2005), edited by Tommie Lindsey; I Woke Up and Put My Crown On: The Project of 76 Voices (Publish America 2005), edited by Rochelle Hart; and Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets and Emcees (Lit Noire Publishing 2006), edited by DuEwa Frazier. Poems from Walker's second book, Signifyin’ Me: New and Selected Poems (J.D. Publishing Group 2005) are published in Gumbo for the Soul: The Recipe for Literacy in the African American Community and Are All the Women Still White?: Globalizing Women’s Studies. Walker was labeled a gifted child when she was in kindergarten reading on the second grade level. While in junior high, she took Honors courses at the local high school, including a Playwrighting course with P.J. Gibson at U.C. Berkeley. She has also taken screenwriting courses with Gregory Allen Howard, brother of her mentor, the late Camille Cole Howard who taught in the Drama Department at San Francisco State. Gregory Howard wrote Remember the Titans and Ali. Some of Waker's early poetry was also published in Woman in the Moon by SDiane Bogus. Her poem, "Ancestral Raindrops," for instance, was featured in Woman in the Moon and won the 2nd Place Poetry Prize. In high school, Walker won the state championship at the California Forensic Association in Dramatic Interpretation for her portrayal of Rose in August Wilson's play, Fences. Always fascinated by playwrighting, film, and fiction, Walker, who participated in Honors programs all throughout junior and high school, would go on to San Francisco State University, where she remained on the Dean's List every semester and graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in Theater Arts. At San Francisco State University, Walker starred in and toured with several theater companies, including The African American Shakespeare Company and The San Francisco Mime Troupe. Pictures from these performances have been published in The Oakland Tribune and The San Francisco Chronicle. She also directed her own plays and developed a love for cinema, having served both in front of the camera and behind the scenes on several independent film projects. At her undergraduate alma mater, Walker received numerous awards for her arts and activism, including The Robert A. Corrigan President's Alumni Scholarship and The Franum Outstanding Black Female Undergraduate Award. Eager to learn more about her own herstory, culture, and contributions, as well as the benefits of becoming self-taught, Walker joined the historic Black Studies program at San Francisco State. There, she learned about the common bond that many people of color share: a legacy of struggle and culture of resistance. Both the Black Studies and Women's Studies program at San Francisco State University developed a thirst within Walker for self-knowledge; a trait she sees in her own students who are inspired to learn more about African American history and culture, including the freedom narratives, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, various other Social Movements, Contemporary Black Autobiography, as well as the contributions of Independent Black Directors. After obtaining her B.A. from San Francisco State, Walker decided to travel East to Washington, DC to pursue her Graduate studies at Howard University. Walker knew that if she wanted to continue writing and publishing, she would first have to learn more about other writers, poets, activists, philosophers, and thinkers who had gone before her, providing her with the rich blueprint that she now builds upon. It was at Howard that Walker received both her Masters and Doctorate of Philosophy in African American and Caribbean Literature. Walker received both degrees from Howard "with distinction." While she was still matriculating at Howard, Walker completed two books: 101 Ways Black Women Can Learn to Love Themselves: A Gift for Women of All Ages (2002) and Signifyin' Me: New and Selected Poems (2006). Walker's first book received stunning reviews from Heart & Soul magazine, Upscale magazine, and Black Issues Book Review, and is still requested to this very day by social workers and psychotherapists around the world who wish to use it in their practice.
While at Howard, Walker was invited by poet E. Ethlebert Miller to join a fellowship program in Poetry at The Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. Walker served a fellowship at The Shakespeare Library for two years, thanks to Miller, while honing and perfecting her poetry. With Haki Madhubuti and Nikki Giovanni at Furious Flower II.
In Washington, DC, Walker also hosted a late-night talk show on WHBC 830 AM called, "Soul Talk with Jamie Walker"—an inspirational talk show about relationships and matters of the soul. She also did voice over work and short commercials for WPFW 89.3FM and WHUR 96.3FM.
Walker's Masters Thesis was entitled, "The Mother Daughter Bond: A Psychoanalytic Feminist Critique of the Bildungsroman in Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John." When she teaches Contemporary Black Autobiography, her love for the bildungsroman shines. It is through this genre, much like the activist autobiographies produced during the late 1960s and early 1970s by women like Angela Davis and Assata Shakur, that we, as readers, are able to see themes of resistance and triumph present in the literature of our predecessors.
While in Harlem, New York, promoting her first book, Walker met poet Sonia Sanchez, who she would bond closely with over the years. Soon enough, Sanchez would travel to DC to teach a Poetry course at Howard University, which Walker registered for --even though it was her last semester in the Doctoral Program. Sanchez and Walker bonded so much that Sanchez asked her to be her Research Assistant. Sanchez also offered Walker a generous scholarship award in her name and honor, on behalf of the Elizabeth H. Howard Trust Fund. Over the years, Walker would travel with Sanchez around the country, assisting her with her poetry workshops and performing along side her in such places like Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, which focuses on Contemplative Education, and The Kentucky Women's Writer's Conference. In Kentucky, Walker performed her poetry with Sonia Sanchez right before the late Shirley Horn graced the audience with her beautiful voice and presence. At Howard, Walker continued chronicling the work of numerous other Black writers in the press. Her feature stories were seen in The New York Amsterdam News, The Washington Informer, The Tennessee Tribune, The San Francisco Bayview, The Long Beach Times, Heart & Soul magazine, and numerous other black newspapers around the country.
Walker is currently in the process of publishing her dissertation, as well as a new book on Oscar Micheaux, which examines women's roles and contributions in Oscar Micheaux's films. In 2011, Walker will also be publishing a critical anthology that she edited called "Sonia On My Mind: Essays on the Poetry and Plays of Sonia Sanchez." Maya Angelou wrote the Foreword to Walker's book and Beverly Guy-Sheftall wrote the Afterword. Included in this hiostoric anthology is Chinua Achebe, Toni Morrison, Akasha Gloria Hull, Joanne Gabbin, Haki Madhubuti, Amiri Baraka, Amina Baraka, and countless others. E. Ethelbert Miller, another one of Walker's mentors, deems this long-awaited anthology to be “a landmark collection.” Walker received her Ph.D. from Howard with distinction. Joanne Gabbin, who organizes the historic Furious Flower Conference at George Mason University, served as her outside reader. The most blessed thing about Walker's Doctoral Defense is that her dear friend and mentor, Sonia Sanchez, was in attendance.
Walker is a member of The National Association of Black Journalists, the Modern Language Association, The Golden Key National Honor Society, The National Women's Studies Association, and The Film Collaborative in Los Angeles.
In addition to teaching Cinema, or courses on the intersection of gender, race, class, and sexuality in African American History, Literature, or Socio-Political Movements, Walker has also teaches Creative Writing, Publishing, and Playwrighting courses to adults.
Walker has a wise "Old Soul," is deeply spiritual, very intuitive, and funny. Most of all, she has a "zest" for life. In addition to publishing, Walker is currently working on bringing to the public her first narrative feature film. She is available for interviews and can be reached via email at JDPublishingInfo@gmail.com. Copyright 2012. Dr. Jamie Walker. All Rights Reserved. |
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