Ashon T. Crawley is an American religious studies scholar, author, and multidisciplinary artist. He is a professor of religious studies and African American and African studies at the University of Virginia and the author of Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility, on aesthetics and performance as modes of social imagination, and The Lonely Letters, an epistolary, semi-autobiographical work. The Lonely Letters won the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Nonfiction and the Believer Book Award for Nonfiction. Crawley is working on a book about the Hammond organ’s historical role in Black church and social life.
Education Crawley earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003, then received a Master of Theological Studies from Emory University in 2007. In 2013, he completed his PhD at Duke University.
Publications
Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility, published October 3, 2016 by Fordham University Press The Lonely Letters, published April 10, 2020 by Duke University Press
Awards +YearAwardNominated workResultRef.2019American Musicological Society Judy Tsou Critical Race Studies AwardBlackpentecostal BreathWinner2020Believer Book Award for NonfictionThe Lonely LettersWinner 2021Lambda Literary Award for NonfictionThe Lonely LettersWinner
References
External links
Official website Crawley reading from The Lonely Letterson YouTube Appearances on NPR Writing for the Los Angeles Review of Books