Priscilla Layne was born in Evanston, IL in 1981 and spent her childhood and early adulthood in Chicago. She studied comparative literature at the University of Chicago and received her PhD in German from the University of California at Berkeley. She is now Professor of German and Adjunct Associate Professor of African Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Her book, White Rebels in Black: German Appropriation of Black Popular Culture, was published in 2018 by the University of Michigan Press. She has also published essays on Turkish German culture, translation, punk and film. She recently translated Olivia Wenzel’s debut novel, 1000 Coils of Fear, from German into English. And she is currently finishing a manuscript on Afro German Afrofuturism and a critical guide to Rainer Maria Fassbinder’s film The Marriage of Maria Braun.