Michaeljulius Y. Idani is a Harlem-born, Burkina Faso-rooted, Atlanta-based writer of fictions, usher at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church (please consider supporting our building fund!), and coordinator of the Black-ish Book Club. A Fulbright Scholar and Visiting Lecturer at the University of Sierra Leone, Fourah Bay College, he earned his MFA in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, as well as a Graduate Certificate in African American Studies from the University of Iowa. During his time at Iowa, he was the Provost Postgraduate Visiting Writer in Fiction and a Visiting Assistant Professor. He is also an alumnus of the Iowa Writers’ Room and the first member of the Iowa writing community to receive the Hancher-Finkbine Medallion, the university’s most prestigious honor, awarded since 1966, recognizing excellence in learning, leadership, and loyalty.
His work is animated by Saidiya Hartman’s concept of Critical Fabulation, pressing imagination against the silences of the historical record to restore what power has erased, challenge who gets to determine historical value, and offer a more truthful and complete portrait of the American project. Drawing equally on the speculative and the magical, his fiction is rooted in the Black literary tradition’s long insistence that imagination has always found truth in what cannot be documented, and that literature can be the strongest communicator of that truth.
He has supported and created initiatives to increase access to creative opportunities such as the MFA App Review, the MFA Seminars, Craft & Conversation, Liloquy, the Be Journal of Creative Expression, and the Writing Project at the DeKalb County Regional Youth Detention Center.
His work has been supported by organizations such as Oxbelly, Periplus, Monson Arts, Kimbilio, The de Groot Foundation, the Hambidge Center, the Hurston/Wright Foundation, Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation, Tin House, Kweli, the Fine Arts Work Center, Jnane Tamsna, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and the Georgia Writers Association.
He is a life member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated and the Toni Morrison Society.
Photo Credit: Logan Lynette Burroughs
