Darryl Pinckney, a long time contributor to The New York Review of Books, is the author of two works of fiction, High Cotton and Black Deutschland, and two works of non fiction, Out There: Mavericks of Black Literature and Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy. He has also worked for the Robert Wilson productions of The Forest, Orlando, Time Rocker, The Old Woman, Letter to A Man, and, most recently, Garrincha: An Opera of the Streets.