Francesca T. Royster is a native of Chicago’s South Side and a professor of English literature at DePaul University in Chicago, where she teaches classes on African American literature and culture, Shakespeare, and gender and queer theory. She is the author of two academic books,Becoming Cleopatra: The Shifting Image of an Icon and Sounding Like a No-No: Queer Sounds and Eccentric Acts in the Post-Soul Era. She received her PhD in English literature from the University of California, Berkeley. Her essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Chicago Literati, and Feminist Studies, among others. She lives in Chicago.