Keenan Norris is a novelist, essayist, and scholar. His novels and essays have received numerous awards. Keenan is the author of The Confession of Copeland Cane, Chi Boy: Native Sons and Chicago Reckonings, and his debut Brother and the Dancer. His work has appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, The Nation, and Zyzzyva, while his short fiction has been published in several anthologies. He is a professor at San Jose State University. At Mesa, Keenan worked on an essay collection, Classroom California: Notes on an Unseen State, which explores the self and the state, as understood through his experience as a black teen in the 1990s Inland Empire and later as an educator in the California community college system. You can learn more about Keenan here.