Deborah G. Plant is an African American Literature and Africana Studies Independent Scholar and literary critic specializing in the life and works of Zora Neale Hurston. She is editor of The Life of Herod the Great (2025) by Zora Neale Hurston and author of Of Greed and Glory: In Pursuit of Freedom for All (2024); editor of Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” (2018), a New York Times bestseller, by Zora Neale Hurston; and author of Alice Walker: A Woman for Our Times (2017), a philosophical biography. She is also editor of The Inside Light: New Critical Essays on Zora Neale Hurston (2010); and author of Zora Neale Hurston: A Biography of the Spirit (2007) and Every Tub Must Sit On Its Own Bottom: The Philosophy and Politics of Zora Neale Hurston (1995). She holds a BA from Southern University, an MA from Atlanta University, and MA and Ph. D. degrees in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She was instrumental in founding the University of South Florida’s Department of Africana Studies and chaired the department for five years. Plant resides in Florida.