The author of Blacks, Reds, and Russians: Sojourners in Search of the Soviet Promise (Rutgers University Press, 2008), Joy Gleason Carew was the resident linguist and a Professor in the Department of Pan-African Studies at the University of Louisville. After serving her students for 20 years, she retired from the U of L in 2020.

She was born in Chicago, Illinois, but spent most of her adult life in other parts of the US or abroad, including numerous trips to the USSR/Russia. Dr. Carew has also been teaching in academe for over forty years, in institutions as varied as community colleges, major research universities, small liberal arts colleges, and historically black universities.

Dr. Carew met Jan Carew in 1974 at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. They married in 1975 and spent the next 37 years together before he passed away in December 2012.

Dr. Carew worked with Jan Carew on a number of projects over the years, including his memoirs, collections of essays, stories and poetry. Two posthumous collaborative publications came out in 2015:  a new, edited collection of poetry, Return to Streets of Eternity (Smokestack Books, UK, 2015), and, Episodes in my Life, volume II of Jan Carew’s memoirs: (Peepal Tree Press. UK 2015).