In 2020, Toliver completed her Ph.D. in Language and Literacy Education and a graduate certificate in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion from the University of Georgia. Prior to that, while a practicing high school teacher, she completed an M.S. in Curriculum and Instruction after earning a B.A. in English Education—both from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), an HBCU in Tallahassee, Florida.

What are the main areas of your scholarship?

Informed by my love of science fiction and fantasy texts, as well as my past experience as a high school English teacher, my scholarship is centered in three interrelated areas: (1) the examination of how Black youth engage in the reading and writing of speculative fiction to discuss and challenge their experiences with social injustice; (2) the consideration of how intersecting oppressions infiltrate the field of education and how educators must use their imaginations to dream of ways to challenge injustice in schools; and (3) the demonstration of how Black people use speculative storytelling to metaphorically describe modern and historical antiblackness and to dream of worlds and futures in which Black people are free from the burdens of societal injustice.

Tell us about your recent work and awards.

I am the author of the book Recovering Black Storytelling in Qualitative Research: Endarkened Storywork, first published in 2021. My academic work has been published in several journals, including Equity, Excellence, & Education; Journal of Literacy Research; and Research in the Teaching of English. My research and public scholarship have been supported by the NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship (2019), the NCTE Cultivating New Voices Fellowship (2020), and the NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship (2023). And I am the proud recipient of several notable awards, including the 2021 Promising Researcher Award for NCTE, the 2023 Qualitative Book Award from the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, the 2022 Alan C. Purves Award from NCTE, and the Steve Cahir Early Career Award from the Writing and Literacies Special Interest Group of AERA.