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Charlotte Hughes Bruner (née Johnston) of Ames, Iowa was a pioneer scholar and editor in the field of African women's writing. She has made a difference in the field by bringing the voices of well-known and unknown women from all over the world to the rest of the world. Bruner curated two collections of African women writers' short stories (Unwinding Threads and African Women’s Writings) which were published by Heinemann Press and distributed globally. During the 1970s and 1980s, she co-directed and co-hosted a series of 170 radio programs on WOI called First Person Feminine, in which she and her husband David delivered discussion and readings of short tales by and about women from around the world.
Bruner has served as the African Literature Association's vice president and as the African editor for The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. She served as a foreign language professor at Iowa State University, teaching thousands of students about the lives and experiences of women and men in other cultures for over 33 years. In 1997, she was inducted to the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame. She passed away December 4, 1999.