Bryan Sinche discusses his 2024 book, Published by the Author: Self-Publication and Nineteenth Century African American Literature , which focuses on a host of Black writers who bypassed white gatekeepers and editors by self-publishing their life stories. Based on extensive research and brimming with new discoveries, Published by the Author recovers a number of long-forgotten authors and shows how they capitalized on the economic and social possibilities of authorship and bookselling. This is the first book to analyze African American self-publication as a historical and literary phenomenon, and it offers new ways of thinking about African American autobiography and nineteenth-century print culture.
Bryan Sinche is Professor and Chair of the Department of English and Modern Languages at the University of Hartford. In addition to more than twenty essays and reviews, he is the author of Published by the Author: Self-Publication and Nineteenth-Century African American Literature, which was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2024.