Zola Mumford

Zola Mumford is a Reference and Instruction Librarian at North Seattle College. She earned her MLIS degree from the University of Washington Information School and a certificate in Distance Learning Design and Development from the UW Extension program. Her professional background includes arts and media production, historical research, and preservation work in university and private film and art archives. Mumford was Curator of the Langston Hughes African American Film Festival, at Seattle’s Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute from 2003-2015. In 2014 she curated and presented a program of short SF films featuring Black characters at the Experience Music Project (Seattle, WA).

Mumford was a presenter at the Afrofuturism Pecha Kucha Seattle event at Seattle’s Northwest African American Museum (2014). Her writing includes “‘'The Politics of Steampunk: Panel Report and Reflections" in The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 5: Writing and Racial Identity (Aqueduct Press, 2011); and HistoryLink.org cyberpedia entries and essays on historic buildings and art. Mumford volunteers for Clarion West, a science fiction writing workshop; Octavia Butler was both a Clarion student (in California) and an instructor. Mumford is a member of the American Library Association, the Washington State Library Association, and the Association of College and Research Librarians, and an alumna of 2012 Minnesota Institute for Early Career Librarians from Traditionally Underrepresented Groups (MIECL). She was recently appointed to the Washington State Adult Education Advisory Council, a council of the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. She is presently the dramaturg for a forthcoming production about a 1918 jazz performance at Seattle’s Washington Hall.