Linda Williamson Nelson joined the Writing Program 1981 and taught courses in writing and African American literature before earning a doctorate in linguistic anthropology. She received the 2009 Candace Achievement Award for “excellence in the area of education,” from the NJ Chapter of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, as well as the Asante award in 2010 from Stockton’s Africana Studies Program. Her scholarly work and teaching continue to represent her interests in both language and literature. She has written on linguistic form as cultural trope in the African American novel, along with her major work on dialectal codeswitching in extended oral narrative discourse.