Véronique Tadjo is a writer, a poet, and a former professor at the University of Abidjan in the Ivory Coast. She earned a B. A. in English from the University of Abidjan and a doctorate from the Sorbonne, Paris IV, in African American Literature and Civilisation. In 1983, she went to Howard University in Washington, D.C., on a Fulbright Research Scholarship. She is the author of As the Crow Flies, Red Earth, and Reine Pokou, which was awarded the Grand Prix Littéraire d'Afrique Noire.