SX Blog

We at Small Axe express our appreciation to the following editorial assistants who have worked with the journal project for the last several years. We wish them every success in their future endeavors.

Noni Carter is a historical and speculative fiction author, performance artist, and academic. Noni has a PhD in French and Francophone studies from Columbia. Her work focuses on memory, gender, and slavery in the literary traditions of the Black diaspora, specifically the French Caribbean. She has published work in Italy's RSA Journal and in Volume 2 of the Comparative Literature History of Modern Slavery compilation. She is the author of the Young-Adult, historical-fiction novel Good Fortune published by Simon & Schuster in 2010 and the recipient of the 2019 PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship for her work-in-progress Young-Adult novel Womb Talk. Noni is a classical pianist and is currently building a multi-media organization for young people of color with her talented sisters. Noni worked as editorial assistant with Small Axe from 2019-2022. You can read more about Noni and learn what she is up to by visiting her website: www.nonicarter.com.

Alyssa A. James is a fifth year PhD candidate in anthropology at Columbia University and started as an editorial assistant with Small Axe in September 2019. She is currently conducting her field work in Martinique, examining the social and political processes involved in reviving the island's storied coffee production. Her research is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Wenner Gren Foundation. Alyssa is also a 2022-2023 Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities Public Humanities Graduate Fellow. She will be working with her colleague and co-host Brendane Tynes to expand the reach of their popular Black feminist anthropology podcast, Zora’s Daughters (zorasdaughters.com).

Liberty Martin (she/her) joined Small Axe as a sophomore and remained as an editorial assistant until a year after she graduated from Columbia University in the City of New York with a B.A. in comparative literature and Caribbean studies. Born and raised within a Jamaican family in London, her research interests include Caribbean creoles and patois in literature and Black British history. She is currently working on her first novel and freelances as an editorial production manager and a research paralegal. She has previously worked with the Economist Educational Foundation, the Financial Times, the Black Cultural Archives, and the Barnard College Digital Humanities Center, amongst other publications and organizations