[2] As of 2016[update] she was an associate professor at American University in Washington, D.C.[3] Perkins-Valdez has said she was inspired to write her debut novel, Wench: A Novel (2010), after reading a biography of W. E. B.

It was noted as first being based at[clarification needed] the buildings and grounds of a former, privately owned resort called Tawawa House, named for the "yellow springs" in the area.

Among the regular summer visitors to the Ohio resort in the antebellum period were Southern white planters and their enslaved mistresses of color.

[6] In 2013, Perkins-Valdez was invited to write an introductory essay to the 37th edition of Solomon Northup's autobiography Twelve Years a Slave.

Each migrated to Chicago after the war, along with thousands of others working to rebuild their lives and to explore new kinds of freedom.