Salamishah Tillet won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for criticism for her work at The New York Times Magazine for columns examining race, genre, and Black perspectives as the arts and entertainment world responded to the Black Lives Matter moment with new works. She is also the author of In Search of The Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece, and currently working on a book on the civil rights icon, Nina Simone. She is currently the Henry Rutgers Professor of Africana Studies and the Director of Express Newark at Rutgers University–Newark. In 2003, she and her sister Scheherazade Tillet founded the arts organization A Long Walk Home.