He received his Ph.D. in English from Emory University in 2016 after receiving prestigious completion fellowships from the University of Pennsylvania and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He received his bachelor’s with distinction, in English, from the University of Virginia in 2008 and afterwards served for two years as a Youth Counselor Supervisor at a residential home for inner-city youth in the City of Charlottesville. His specialties are in twentieth and twenty-first century African American and Caribbean literatures.