Chesya Burke

Chesya Burke is an American editor, educator and author of comic books and speculative fiction, most notably in the genres of horror and dark fantasy. She has published over a hundred short stories, essays, and articles in magazines and anthologies such as Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror, Clarkesworld, Apex Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, and Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany. Her short story collection Let's Play White was published in 2011 while her debut novel, The Strange Crimes of Little Africa, was released in late 2015. Nikki Giovanni has compared Burke's fiction to that of Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison.

Life

Burke grew up in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. She earned a double major in Africana Studies and English from Agnes Scott College and a Masters in African-American studies from Georgia State University. Her master's thesis was on Storm from The X-Men. Burke earned her Ph.D. in English at the University of Florida. She is active in literary and feminist communities, for example serving as co-chair of the Board of Directors of Charis Circle, the nonprofit programming arm of Charis Books & More, the Atlanta area's independent feminist bookstore.

Fiction Burke's first full-length short story collection Let's Play White was published in 2011 by Apex Publications. The collection was favorably reviewed in the Midwest Book Review, Austin Post and Publishers Weekly.

Burke's debut novel The Strange Crimes of Little Africa was published in late 2015 by RothCo Press. The novel is a mystery set during the 1920s Harlem Renaissance and features a Black detective who realizes "she may have to sacrifice her cousin's freedom when she discovers evidence that her father, the first black traffic cop on the force, may be guilty of murder." The novel features an appearance by a fictional version of Zora Neale Hurston.

Critical reception

Burke is known for blending different genres together with her writings. Samuel R. Delany called her a "formidable new master of the macabre" while poet Nikki Giovanni has compared Burke's writing to that of Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison

Her short story "An American Fable" in Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror, edited by Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams, was praised for turning a scary ghost story into a work of "spiritual deliverance and kinship."

A class of undergraduate English students at Michigan State University created a website analyzing the themes of her short story collection through the lens of Black feminism, as embodied in the work of Patricia Hill Collins and Barbara Christian.