About
Salamishah Tillet is an academic and artistic polyglot whose work spans academia, public art, civic justice, and cultural criticism. Educated at the highest levels, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude with her BA in English and African American Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, earned a Masters in the Art of Teaching from Brown University, another Masters in English and American Literature, as well as a Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization from Harvard. In 2023, she received an honorary terminal degree—a fine arts doctorate from Moore College of Art and Design. She now serves as the Distinguished Professor of Africana Studies and Creative Writing at Rutgers University.
As a champion of artists and survivors alike, she co-founded A Long Walk Home, an arts organization that empowers young people to end sexual violence. She was the co-host and co-producer of “Because of Anita” podcast with Cindi Leive of The Meteor. In 2022, “Because of Anita” won Webby and Gracie awards.
She has also led major cultural institutions in Newark, a city that’s long been considered home, including Express Newark — a center for socially engaged art and design—and New Arts—a public arts studio at Rutgers. An artisan in her own right, Tillet’s public art collaborations, notably "Pulling Together” and “The Wards of Newark: Manuel Acevedo” explore themes of gentrification, belonging, and urban renewal. Her work continues to reimagine who public space is for, from Washington, D.C.’s National Mall to New Jersey's city streets.
A true steward of culture, Tillet is a critic-at-large for The New York Times, where she earned the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Her writing can also be experienced on bookshelves as she is the author of “Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination” and “In Search of the Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece” , and is completing a narrative nonfiction work on the titanic Nina Simone, forthcoming in February 2027.
She was recently named the recipient of The Gordon Parks Foundation’s Genevieve Young Fellowship in Writing and the Emerson Collective Fellowship for leaders taking on hyperlocal projects to help their communities come together and solve complex problems.