Nicole Willey is an associate professor of English at Kent State University Tuscarawas, where she teaches African American and other literatures, along with a variety of writing courses. Her research interests include mothering, memoir, nineteenth-century American literature, and slave narratives. She wrote Creating a New Ideal of Masculinity for American Men: The Achievement of Sentimental Women Writers in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. She lives in New Philadelphia, Ohio with her husband and two sons.