Calvin Baker

Calvin Baker (born 1972) is an American novelist, educator, essayist, and editor who has chronicled the African-American experience from the colonial era to the present, centering the Black voice and perspective within the context of trans-Atlantic history. Among his concerns are constructions of American identity, cosmopolitanism, post-colonialism, modernity, geography, and science. His work is often praised for its expansiveness and richness of language. He has taught at Yale College, Skidmore College, and Columbia University's Graduate Center for the Arts.

Biography

Born in Chicago, Baker attended the University of Chicago Lab Schools and graduated in 1994 from Amherst College, where he received his degree in English with highest honors in the major. His work has been widely acclaimed by critics as well as writers as diverse as Joseph O'Neill, Junot Díaz, Jeffery Renard Allen, Francisco Goldman, Dale Peck, Maud Newton, and Hannah Tinti. Peck, widely known for his critical takedowns, has called Baker one of his favorite living writers, saying of Grace: "He works in a rarefied strain of literature whose practitioners include Faulkner, Morrison, Calvino and Cormac McCarthy." Newton has praised Baker's Dominion for "richness of language that recalls the King James."

In 2017 Baker teamed with Peck and publisher John Oakes to relaunch the Evergreen Review, the literary journal founded by Barney Rosset, which was influential in bringing attention to writers such as Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, Vladimir Nabokov, Edward Albee, and Leroi Jones.

Early in his career Baker worked as a journalist at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Time Inc., and The Village Voice. His work has also appeared in Harper's Magazine and The New York Times Magazine. His longform piece, Notes for a Spanish Odyssey, about race and migration in Spain, was published as a Kindle Single with Amazon, and is part of the New York Public Library's permanent digital collection.

He has taught in the English department at Yale, Columbia University's MFA program, and the American studies department at the University of Leipzig, Germany. He also co-founded the digital content platform ScrollMotion, with Josh Koppel and John Lema. Baker lives in Saratoga Springs, New York.