Donna Aza Weir-Soley

Dr. Donna Aza Weir-Soley was born in St. Catherine, Jamaica, and immigrated to the United States at the age of 17. She graduated summa cum laude from Hunter College and subsequently earned an MA in English and a PhD in English Literary Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Currently an Associate Professor of English at Florida International University, Weir-Soley was the Coordinator for the Mellon Foundation’s Hispanic Serving Institution Pathways to the Professoriate Fellowship (FIU, 2019-2020) and the Butler Waugh Professor of English (FIU-2021-23) She is the former President of the Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars (ACWWS) and co-organized (with Opal Palmer Adisa) the first ACWWS-IGDS International Virtual Conference in January 2021 during Covid. Under Weir-Soley’s leadership, not only did the ACWWS relaunch its peer-reviewed journal, MaComére (which was on a ten-year hiatus), as an online entity, but the organization also restored its bi-annual face-to-face transnational conference in Costa Rica in June 2023. 
 

Dr. Weir-Soley’s publications include Eroticism, Spirituality and Resistance in Black Women's Writings, Caribbean Erotic (with Opal Palmer Adisa), and two books of poetry, First Rain and The Woman Who Knew. Her poetry and literary works have appeared in numerous journals, books and anthologies, including The Sea Needs No Ornament, Archipelagos of Sound: Transnational Caribbeanities: Women and Music; Review 99: Literature and Arts of the Americas; The Caribbean Writer; MaComére: the journal of the Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars; Rihanna: Barbados World-Gurl in Global Popular Culture; Legba’s Crossing: Narratology in the African Atlantic; II Tolomeo: a Post-Colonial Studies Journal; Maternal Metaphors of Power; Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature; 100+ Voices for Miss Lou; The One You Call Sister; Florida International University: Introduction to Literature, a Norton Anthology; WomanSpeak: a Journal of Writing and Art by Caribbean Women, and the journal, Poetry.