Ladee Hubbard

Ladee Hubbard was born in Massachusetts and raised in Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands. She is the author of the 2017 novel The Talented Ribkins, inspired by the enduring impact of W.E.B. Dubois’ 1903 essay, “The Talented Tenth”. It received the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. Her second novel, The Rib King, was published in 2021 and concerned the impact of minstrelsy on African Americans’ efforts to assert their rights as citizens at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Last Suspicious Holdout, a collection of short stories chronicling the transformation of a single community over the course of the fifteen year period of 1992-2007, was published in 2022.

She is a recipient of a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, The Berlin Prize and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award. She has also received residencies and awards from Camargo, MacDowell, Hedgebrook and Callaloo among other organizations. She received a BA in English from Princeton University, a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a PhD in Folklore and Mythology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She currently lives in New Orleans.