In 2025, as part of its “Black Lives” series, Yale University Press published Shelley Fisher Fishkin’s biography of Jim, the literary character from Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). A renowned scholar of race and widely regarded as the seminal expert on Twain, Fishkin recently spoke with Stanford English graduate student Lydia Burleson about the process of writing the book, her personal connections to Twain, and why returning to Jim still holds value today.
Interview: Shelley Fisher Fishkin on her book Jim
