J L PowersJ.L. Powers is a novelist and scholar. Her recent novel This Thing Called the Future is a coming of age story set in post-Apartheid South Africa. Her previous anthology was Labor Pains and Birth Stories. She holds master's degrees in Afican History from State University of New York-Albany and Stanford University, won a Fulbright-Hayes to study Zulu in South Africa, and served as a visiting scholar in Stanford's African Studies Department in 2008 and 2009. She lives in San Francisco's Bay area. Read More Read Less