Vanessa K Valdés

(she/her/ella/ela) is the Editor of CENTRO Press and as such, oversees the publication of books from proposal to book launch. She is the author of Oshun’s Daughters: The Search for Womanhood in the Americas (2014); Diasporic Blackness: The Life and Times of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (2017); and co-author, with David Pullins, of Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter in the Age of Velazquéz (2023). She is the editor of Let Spirit Speak! Cultural Journeys through the African Diaspora (2012); The Future Is Now: A New Look at African Diaspora Studies (2012); Racialized Visions: Haiti and the HIspanic Caribbean (2020); co-editor, with Earl E. Fitz, of Machado de Assis, Blackness, and the Americas (2024), and co-editor, with Barrye Brown and Laura E. Helton, of Black Studies on 135th Street: The Founding and Future of the Schomburg Collection (2026). She is also the series editor of Afro-Latinx Futures at SUNY Press and series co-editor of Global Black Writers in Translation at Vanderbilt University Press. Dr. Valdes earned her B.A. in English at Yale University, and her M.A. in Portuguese, M.A. in Spanish, and combined PhD in Spanish and Portuguese at Vanderbilt University.