This week we interview Gene Andrew Jarrett, Dean of the Faculty and William S. Tod Professor of English at Princeton University. His latest book, Paul Laurence Dunbar: The Life and Times of a Caged Bird, published in October 2022 by Princeton University Press, examines the Gilded Age writer known as the poet laureate of his race. Jarrett also authored Representing the Race: A New Political History of African American Literature and Deans and Truants: Race and Realism in African American Literature, and he co-edited The Collected Novels of Paul Laurence Dunbar and The Complete Stories of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Gene Andrew Jarrett was interviewed by fellow biographer and BIO member Kevin McGruder.