Weaving together the voices of multiple speakers, The Homesteader follows Oscar Micheaux on the path from homesteader to early African-American filmmaker. Micheaux’s story explores the difficulty and power of finding one’s voice in a violent world; his journey unfolds as D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation enjoys unprecedented success, spurring a revival of the Klu Klux Klan, and Leo Frank’s controversial trial for the 1913 murder of Mary Phagan ends in disaster. Panoramic but meticulous, The Homesteader shows how Micheaux’s eventual triumph has influenced us all.

A. Van Jordan is the author of four collections: Rise, which won the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award (Tia Chucha Press, 2001); M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A, (2005), which was listed as one the Best Books of 2005 by The London Times; Quantum Lyrics, (2007); and The Cineaste, (2013), W.W. Norton & Co. Jordan has been awarded a Whiting Writers Award, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and a Pushcart Prize. He is a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and a United States Artists Williams Fellowship. He is a Professor in the Department of English at the University of Michigan, and teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.