Wendy M. Thompson

Wendy M. Thompson is a poet, writer, and historian who hails from Oakland, California. Her debut poetry collection Black California Gold, which maps out life in the Bay Area during the 1980s and 1990s, was a finalist for the Martin Cruz Smith Award: Emerging Diverse Voices prize (2026 Golden Poppy Awards). She has a forthcoming scholarly book titled, Chasing the Sun: Staging Black Life and Belonging in California’s Bay Area, which looks at the cultural and performative worlds that black migrants and their descendants staged from the Second Great Migration to the contemporary era. Her creative and research interests include black California and the Bay Area, race and the built environment, interracial families and mixed race identity, and nature and the natural world. She is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at San José State University.