Kathleen Pfeiffer is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Oakland University on Rochester, Michigan.  She teaches courses in American literature, African American literature, the Harlem Renaissance, biography, memoir, and creative nonfiction.  She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Brandeis University, and her B.A. cum laude with Departmental Distinction from Emmanuel College.

Dr. Pfeiffer has published a monograph, Race Passing and American Individualism (University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), an edited collection, Brother Mine: The Correspondence of Jean Toomer and Waldo Frank, and has edited and introduced the re-issue of two Harlem Renaissance novels, Nigger Heaven by Carl Van Vechten, and Holiday by Waldo Frank.  Her scholarship has also appeared in the journals Women’s Studies, African American Review, Legacy, and Modernism/modernity, and she has written numerous biographical essays for the American Writers Supplement series from Scribner. As a creative writer, Dr. Pfeiffer was awarded the prestigious Kresge Artist Fellowship in 2012, and she won the Michigan Writers Chapbook Contest in 2018 for her memoir Ink, published by the Michigan Writers Cooperative Press.  Her creative nonfiction has also appeared in The Sun magazine, Bateau, and the Bear River Review.