Dr. Vanessa K. Valdés is a writer and scholar whose work focuses on the literatures, visual arts, and histories of Black peoples throughout the Western hemisphere. An engaging speaker, she worked as a professor and administrator at the City University of New York for seventeen years, from 2007-2024, earning the rank of full professor. The author and editor of eight books, she has written on literatures by Black women in the United States, Cuba, and Brazil as well as a field-defining biography of Arturo Schomburg, namesake of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City. Additionally, she has written on episodes of history on Haiti and Puerto Rico. Her most recent book focuses on Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), Brazil’s most widely-canonized writer. From 2021-2023, she co-curated Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter, an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and co-authored its exhibition catalogue. In addition to her long-standing relationship with the Schomburg Center, Dr. Valdés has collaborated with Ballet Hispánico for its dance “Buscando a Juan” and Lincoln Center for their Legacies of San Juan Hill series. A member of Opera America, she is a librettist of new operas, working to expand narratives of Black history in that space. She is the editor of the Afro-Latinx Futures series at the State University of New York Press and is the co-editor of the Global Black Writers in Translation series at Vanderbilt University Press. She has previously served on the advisory boards of the College Languages Association Journal, WSQ, and PALARA, and she continues to serve as advisor to Small Axe and Callaloo. Additionally, she serves on the Advisory Committee of the Schomburg Center Centennial Celebration, taking place from May 2025-May 2026, and serves as Project Lead Scholar for the Schomburg’s Mellon-funded initiative, The Next Century of Black Studies. She also sits on the Advisory Boards of CENTRO Press and the Harlem Chamber Players, and is a volunteer for the Harlem Opera Theater.