Maria Eliza Hamilton Abegunde

Maria Eliza Hamilton Bispo de Jesus Abegunde is an egungun (ancestral) priestess in the Yoruba Orisa tradition and Reiki Master with a focus on the recovery of ancestral memory from the Earth and human body. Her ongoing research is on embodied memory of the Middle Passage and slave trade for African Americans and black Brasilians.…

Elizabeth Acevedo

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO was born and raised in New York City and her poetry is infused with her Dominican parents’ bolero and her beloved city’s tough grit. She holds a BA in Performing Arts from The George Washington University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland. With over twelve years of performance experience, Acevedo is…

Opal Palmer Adisa

Diverse, innovative and multi-genre, Opal Palmer Adisa is an exceptional talent, nurtured on cane-sap and the oceanic breeze of Jamaica. Charismatic and informed, Adisa’s concerns span the gamut from children to the environment, and as such there is hardly any topic that she has not written about either in poetry, prose or essay.  A highly sought-after motivational…

M. Saida Agostini

Saida is a queer Afro-Guyanese poet whose work explores the ways that Black folks harness mythology to enter the fantastic. Saida’s poetry can be found in Barrelhouse Magazine, the Black Ladies Brunch Collective’s anthology, Not Without Our Laughter, and other publications. Her first collection of poems, just let the dead in, was a finalist for…

Joshua Aiken

Joshua Allen Aiken is a poet, researcher, and historian currently based in New Haven, Connecticut. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice and his work has been featured or is forthcoming in publications such as Nepantla, Winter Tangerine, Assaracus, cahoodaloodaling, The Triptych Review, glitterMOB, fog machine, juked, Local Nomad, TENDER LOIN, and Forklift,…

Jane Alberdeston Coralin

Abdul Ali

Abdul Ali—poet, writer, educator, and cultural worker – is the Andrew W. Mellon program coordinator at the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC). Ali has held distinguished teaching appointments at Johns Hopkins University, Howard University, and Goucher College. He is the recipient of the 2019 Ruby Grant, from the Robert Deutsch Foundation. His debut collection…

Lauren K. Alleyne

Shirlette Ammons

Shirlette Ammons’ most recent collection of poetry, Matching Skin featuring The John Anonymous EP was published by Carolina Wren Press in 2008. first collection entitled Stumphole: Aunthology of Backwoods Blood was published by Big Drum Press in 2002. Her work has appeared in The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, What Your Momma Never Tod You:…

Anastacia-Renee

Anastacia-Renee is an award-winning cross-genre writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, TEDX speaker and podcaster. Renee is the author of (v.), (Black Ocean Press), Forget It (Black Radish Press) and Answer(Me), (Winged City Chapbook Press). She has received fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, VONA, Artist Trust, Jack Straw, Ragdale, Mineral School, Hypatia in the Woods…

E.J. Antonio

Raymond Antrobus

Raymond Antrobus was born in London, Hackney to an English mother and Jamaican father, and is the author of ‘To Sweeten Bitter’ and ‘The Perseverance’. He is a founding member of ‘Chill Pill’ and ‘Keats House Poets Forum’ and the recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, Complete Works 3 and Jerwood Compton Poetry. He is also…

Christina Archer

Derrick L. Austin

Derrick Austin’s first collection of poems, Trouble the Water, was selected by Mary Szybist for the 2015 A Poulin Jr Prize and is forthcoming from BOA Editions in Spring 2016. He earned his MFA from the University of Michigan. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Poetry 2015, Image: A Journal of…

Cameron Awkward-Rich

Cameron Awkward-Rich is on the staff of Muzzle Magazine and his work has appeared/is forthcoming in The Seattle Review, The Journal, Vinyl, cream city review and elsewhere. He is currently a PhD candidate in Modern Thought & Literature at Stanford University.  Sympathetic Little Monster, Cam’s first collection of poetry, is forthcoming from Ricochet Editions in 2016. 

Gustavo Adolfo Aybar

Gustavo Adolfo Aybar is a graduate of the University of Missouri-Kansas City where he received his MA in Romance Languages & Literature. As a scholar he’s presented at the University of Florida, and has upcoming publications by ABC-CLIO and Salem Press. He is a Cave Canem fellow, and as a member of the Latino Writer’s…

makalani bandele

  I am a Louisville, KY native. I am an ordained Baptist minister and former pastor. I hold degrees from University of Notre Dame and Shaw University-Divinity School.  A member of the Affrilachian Poets since 2008, I received a Kentucky Arts Council Al Smith fellowship, as well as fellowships from Millay Colony of the Arts…

Aziza Barnes

Samiya Bashir

Samiya Bashir’s work includes the forthcoming book of poems, Field Theory, as well as Gospel, Where the Apple Falls, and the anthology Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art coedited with Tony Medina and Quraysh Ali Lansana. Her work has been featured in numerous publications and she is the recipient of…

Holly Bass

Venise Battle

Herman Beavers

Joshua Bennett

Michelle Courtney Berry

Michelle Courtney Berry, the second Poet Laureate of Tompkins County, has appeared on “Good Morning America” and was elected delegate for Mr. Barack Obama in her Congressional District by over 16,000 votes. A former City Councilwoman and Alternate Acting Mayor for the City of Ithaca, she teaches at Ithaca College and Cornell University. She has opened in poetry and song…

Lillian Bertram

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is a Gaius Charles Bolin Fellow in English at Williams College where she teaches poetry. She is a graduate of the Creative Writing Program at Carnegie Mellon University, and received her MFA in poetry from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where she worked on the magazine Ninth Letter. She is a Cave Canem…

Marion Bethel

Reginald Dwayne Betts

Dwayne writes poems. This is what he tells people, this is what he stands by. In the footnotes of his life there will be a line that reads: saved by an Etheridge Knight poem. In August 2009 his memoir, A Question of Freedom, was published by Avery/ Penguin – it is a complicated story of…

Tara Betts

Originally from Illinois, Tara Betts is the author of Arc and Hue. She is a graduate of the New England College MFA Program. She represented Chicago twice at the National Poetry Slam, coached youth who went on to Brave New Voices, and appeared on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. Her writing has also been dramatized for the…

Angela A. Bickham

Remica L. Bingham

Remica L. Bingham, a native of Phoenix, Arizona, received her MFA from Bennington College. She has been awarded fellowships from the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshops and Cave Canem. In addition to other journals, her work has been featured in 5 AM, New Letters, PMS, Crab Orchard Review, Gulf Coast, Mosaic, and Essence. Her first book,…

Destiny Oshay Birdsong

    Destiny Birdsong is a graduate of Fisk University,  where she received her B.A. in History and English.  She is also a graduate of Vanderbilt University,where she received her MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry), and where she is currently working towards a PhD in literature.  Her current manuscript is tentatively titled Sugar: Poems. 

Timothy Black

Timothy Black’s first book, Connecticut Shade, a fusion of poetry, prose and play, was published in 2008 and is currently in its second printing from WSC Press. Tim’s poetry has appeared in the journals The Platte Valley Review, The Logan House Anthology of 21st Century American Poetry, The Great American Roadshow and Words Like Rain.…

Tommye Blount

A native of Detroit, Tommye Blount is purusing an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers. He recieved his B.A. in advertising from Michgan State University. He’s had work published in the Cave Canem XI Anothology, The Collagist, and Upstreet. 

Roger Bonair-Agard

Shane Book

Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE Shane Book’s first collection, Ceiling of Sticks, won the 2009 Prairie Schooner Book Prize and the 2012 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, and was a 2011 Poetry Society of America “New American Poet” Selection. He is a graduate of New York University and the Iowa…

Malika S Booker

Malika Booker is a British writer of Guyanese and Grenadian Parentage, who writes poetry, plays and solo monologues.  Her poems are widely anthologised in anthologies and journals including Bittersweet: Contemporary Black Women’s Poetry (The Women’s Press, 1998), Wasafiri; No 32 (Autumn 2000), The Penguin Anthology of New Black Writing (2000), The India International Journal (2005),…

Dexter Booth

Crystal Boson

Jari Bradley

jaribradley.com Jari Bradley is a black genderqueer poet and scholar from San Francisco, California. Jari has received fellowships from Callaloo, Cave Canem, and Tin House. Their work has been featured in the Huffington Post, and is listed by Blavity among “15 Creatives in the Bay Area You Should Know.” Jari’s work has also been published…

Antoinette Brim

Antoinette Brim, author of two collections of poetry “Icarus in Love” (Main Street Rag, 2013) and “Psalm of the Sunflower” (Willow Books, 2009), is a Cave Canem Foundation fellow, a recipient of the Walker Foundation Scholarship to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her poetry, memoir and critical work…

Matthew Broaddus

LeRonn Brooks

Derrick Brown

Derrick Weston Brown holds an MFA in Creative Writing from American University. He was the founding Poet-In-Residence at Busboys and Poets and has taught creative writing and poetry at all levels of education. His poetry has been featured in such publications as The Washington Post, The New Orleans Times-Picayune and Colorlines. His work has also been featured in such journals…

drea brown

Originally from St.Louis, drea brown is currently a PhD candidate in African and African Diaspora Studies at UT Austin. her work has appeared in a variety of literary journals most recently Stand Our Ground: Poems for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander and Southern Indiana Review. drea is also the winner of the 2014 Gold Line Press poetry chapbook competition judged by…

F. Douglas Brown

Jericho Brown

Mahogany L. Browne

  Mahogany has four LPs including the international hit Black Secret Soul and the newest live album Sheroshima. As co-founder of the Off Broadway poetry production, Jam On It, and co-producer of NYC’s 1st Performance Poetry Festival: SoundBites Poetry Festival, Mahogany bridges the gap between lyrical poets and literary emcee. Her freelance journalism can be found in magazines…

Gloria Jean Burgess

Poet, author, mother, daughter, sister, consultant, and executive coach; 33 years in a legacy marriage. Faculty: University of Washington, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center (Leadership Institute), and Bainbridge Graduate Institute. Three books of poetry, including The Open Door and Journey of the Rose. Best-selling non-fiction: Dare to Wear Your Soul on the Outside (Jossey-Bass/Wiley) and…

Jocelyn Burrell

CM Burroughs

CM Burroughs has been awarded fellowships and grants from organizations including Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Cave Canem, Callaloo Writers Workshop and the University of Pittsburgh. She has received commissions from the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Warhol Museum to create poetry in response to art installations. A graduate…

Evan R. Burton

Evan Burton lives in Harlem. He is an MFA candidate at the City College of New York and a first year fellow.  He thinks of poetry variably, as a space ship, a possibility, an angry something; as an art perpetually disappointed by its practitioners, as something to do on Sundays, as an alternative to employment,…

Aichlee Bushnell

Elizabeth Butler

James Cagney

Cave Canem fellow James Cagney is a  writer, poet and performer from Oakland, Ca.   He’s appeared as a featured artist at venues such as the San Francisco Public Library, The Starry Plough, La Pena Cultural Center, Above Paradise Lounge, The Stork Club, Spasso’s Cafe, The Jahva House, Mahogany Restaurant, Nu Upper Room and OK Hotel…

Monique-Adelle Callahan

Christian Campbell

Christian Campbell is a writer of Bahamian and Trinidadian heritage.  He studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and received a PhD at Duke.  His poetry and essays have been published widely in journals and anthologies in the Caribbean, the UK, the US and Canada.  An Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toronto,…

Erica Campbell

Sheila Carter-Jones

Robin Caudell

Robin Caudell is an AP award-winning journalist and videographer. She has been a staff writer at the Press-Republican since 1990. Born and raised on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, she holds a B.S. in Journalism from the University of Maryland at College Park and a MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. She is a brand-new alum of SongwritingWith:Soldiers…

Chelsea Celestain

Nikia Chaney

Nikia Chaney is a poet from the Inland Empire of California. She is author of two chapbooks, Sis Fuss (2012, Orange Monkey Publishing) and ladies, please (2012, Dancing Girl Press).  She is founding editor of shufpoetry, an online journal for experimental poetry, and founding editor of Jamii Publishing, a publishing imprint dedicated to fostering community among poets and writers. She…

Cortney Lamar Charleston

Cortney Lamar Charleston is originally from South Holland, IL, a suburb of Chicago, and currently resides in Jersey City, NJ. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a BS in Economics from The Wharton School and a BA in Urban Studies from the College of Arts & Sciences. While…

Adrienne E Christian

Adrienne Christian earned her BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan, and her MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University. She is the author of the poetry book A Proper Lover (Main Street Rag, 2017), and 12023 Woodmont Avenue (Willow Books, 2013). Her poems have been featured, or are forthcoming, in The L.A. Review, Prairie Schooner, frogpond, Obsidian, Alimentum, The Criterion,…

Jeremy Clark

Jeremy Clark is from Louisville, Ky, where he completed his undergraduate work in Pan-African Studies at the University of Louisville in 2014. A participant in the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, he is currently an MFA candidate at Rutgers University in Newark & his work appears in Pluck! & Callaloo.

Billy Coakley

Carleasa Coates

Ama Codjoe

Ama Codjoe is the author of Blood of the Air, winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize, and Bluest Nude (Milkweed Editions, 2022). She is the recipient of honors including a 2017 Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, a 2019 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, and a 2020 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship.

Taiyon J Coleman

Aaron Coleman

Kristiana Rae Colón

Kristiana Rae Colón is a poet, playwright, actor, educator, and co-director of the #LetUsBreathe Collective.  Her play but i cd only whisper had its American premiere at The Flea in New York. Her play Octagon, winner of Arizona Theater Company’s 2014 National Latino Playwriting Award and Polarity Ensemble Theater’s Dionysos Festival of New Work, had its world premiere…

Nandi Njeri-Ayinde Comer

Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE Nandi Comer currently serves as poetry editor for the Indiana Review. She is also pursuing an MFA in Poetry and an MA in African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University. She has received a Vera Meyer Strube Poetry Prize, as well as fellowships from Callaloo. Her poems have…

Tameka Cage Conley

Lauri Conner

April Cook-Suravallop

Rio Cortez

Rio Cortez is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, where she was the recipient of the Lucy Grealy Prize in Poetry. She is a Cave Canem fellow & MFA candidate at New York University. Her work has appeared in Dark Phrases, Clementine, Cratelit & upcoming in Tuesday;An Art Project & Tidal Basin Review. She loves &…

Matilda Cox

Anya Creightney

Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE Anya Creightney is originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico with roots in Kingston and Copenhagen. She attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, followed by two years of travel, which included stints in Mongolia, Guatemala and Tunisia. In the past seven years, she has worked as a teacher and…

Curtis L. Crisler

Curtis L. Crisler was born and raised in Gary, Indiana. He received a BA in English, with a minor in Theatre, from Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW), and he received an MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Crisler’s book, THe GReY aLBuM [PoeMS], was picked by Steel Toe Books and published in 2018. Other…

Teri Cross Davis

Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the author of Haint, (Gival Press, 2016) winner of the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. She has attended the Soul Mountain Writer’s Retreat, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She is on the Advisory Council of Split This Rock (a biennial poetry…

Vida Cross

A blues poet and a 2018 Pushcart nominee, Vida Cross’ book of poetry, Bronzeville at Night:1949, debuted in 2017. She is a Cave Canem Fellow who holds an MFA in Writing and an MFA in Filmmaking from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, an MA in English from Iowa State University and a…

Kamau Daaood

DeLana R.A. Dameron

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 DéLana R. A. Dameron  is the author of How God Ends Us (University of South Carolina Press 2009), chosen by Elizabeth Alexander as the 2008 South Carolina Poetry Book Prize. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Essence Magazine, African American Review, Rattle, The Ringing Ear:…

Traci Dant

Traci Dant has a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Washington University in St. Louis.  She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Illinois Arts Council.  Her work has been published in Crab Orchard Review and featured on NPR’s “The Writers Almanac”. In 2010, a collection of her poetry for children will…

Kyle Dargan

Kyle Dargan lives and writes in Washington, D.C.

Dorothy Davis

Eisa Davis

Geffrey Davis

Geffrey Davis is the author of Revising the Storm (BOA Editions, 2014), winner of the A. Poulin Poetry Prize. He is also the recipient of the Anne Halley Poetry Prize, the Wabash Prize for Poetry, the Dogwood First Prize in Poetry, the Leonard Steinberg Memorial/Academy of American Poets Award, nominations for the Pushcart Prize, and a Graduate…

Hayes Davis

Jarita Davis

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Jarita Davis is a poet and fiction writer who earned a B.A. in classics from Brown University and both an M.A. and a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. She was the writer in residence at the Nantucket Historical Association and has received fellowships from…

Kahn Davison

Tyree Daye

Aya de Leon

Jarvis DeBerry

Maurice E. Decaul

Maurice Emerson Decaul, a former Marine, is a poet, essayist and playwright whose writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Sierra Magazine, Epiphany, Callaloo, Narrative, The Common and elsewhere. His poems have been translated into French and Arabic. His theatre pieces have been produced at New York City’s Harlem Stage; Poetic License Festival,…

Nehassaiu deGannes

Sean DesVignes

Sean DesVignes is the author of the upcoming chapbook, Take My Eyes To The Dry Cleaners. Working intensively in NYC’s performance poetry scene, he is a two-time member of the LouderARTS Slam Team. His literary honors include fellowships and scholarships from Cave Canem, Callaloo, & the Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference. Named “Best Rookie” at the…

de'Angelo Dia

As a poet, theologian, and comicbook scholar, Dia investigates public opinion and contemporary beliefs on cultural, social-political, and theological issues through performance art. He received a Bachelor of Science in Applied Communication and Sociology from Appalachian State University, a Master of Arts in Literature from The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and a Master…

Joel Wayne Dias-Porter

(aka DJ Renegade) was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, and is a former professional DJ in the DC area. From 1994- 1999 I competed in the National Poetry Slam, finishing as high as second place in the individual competition, and was the 1998 and 99 Haiku Slam Champion. Places my poems have been published…

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs

  Writer, vocalist, and sound artist, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is the author TwERK (2013, Belladonna); three chapbooks which include Ichi-Ban, Ni-Ban (MOH Press), Manuel is destroying my bathroom (Belladonna Press); and the album, Televisíon. Her work has been published in Rattapallax, Black Renaissance Noir, Nocturnes, Fence, Ploughshares, The Black Scholar, P.M.S, LA Review, Jubilat, Everything But the Burden, Tea Party…

Kimberly Dixon

Ms. Dixon was a finalist in the Guild Literary Complex’s annual Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Awards, a featured artist in the Guild’s performance poetry project “Tour Guides,” has been published by international literary magazine Versal and online journal The Drunken Boat, appears in the anthology “Just Like a Girl: A Manifesta!” and is also a Callaloo workshop alum.  …

Alyss Dixson

Alyss Dixson received a BA in Comparative Literature from Yale. She attended Columbia University School of the Arts, MFA in Film before leaving to work in the film business where she ran Rat Entertainment for five years as principal executive and producer working on Rush Hour I&II (New Line Cinema), Family Man (Universal), Paid in…

Gina Dorcely

Mitchell L. H. Douglas

Mitchell L. H. Douglas’ poetry has appeared in Callaloo, Ninth Letter, Crab Orchard Review and the anthologies The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (University of Georgia Press) and Zoland Poetry, Volume II (Steerforth Press) among others. A founding member of the Affrilachian Poets and Poetry Editor for PLUCK!: The Journal of Affrilachian Arts &…

R. Erica Doyle

Kebo Drew

Olga Dugan

Camille T. Dungy

Camille T. Dungy is the author of Smith Blue, Suck on the Marrow, and What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison.  She is the editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, co-editor of From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just…

Robin Dunn Bryant

Mary Moore Easter

Pushcart Prize-nominated poet Mary Moore Easter’s work has been published in, among other journals, Poetry, Seattle Review, Water Stone, Calyx, Pluck!, Persimmon Tree and Fjord’s Review, and in the anthology Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota (2015). Her chapbook Walking from Origins was published by Heywood Press in 1993. She holds a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence and an M.A. from Goddard. A…

Julian Gregory Marcellus Easterly

Born in Paducah, Kentucky and raised in Detroit, Michgan. Published in several anthologies including Fresh Ink and Zero Gravity and on WordPress. The Youngest Cave Canem Poet.

Tafisha Edwards

Natasha Ria El-Scari

Natasha Ria El-Scari is a writer, editor, Cave Canem fellow, performance poet and educator for over a decade. Her poetry is widely published. She is the author of, Screaming Times (Spartan Press, 2015), The Only Other (Main Street Rag, 2016), Mama Sutra—Love and Lovemaking Advice to My Son (2019), Growing Up Sina (2020) I Say,…

Teri Elam

teri elam, an Atlantan, has been published in Prairie Schooner, Slice Magazine, december magazine, Auburn Avenue, Limp Wrist, Cave Canem’s The Ringing Ear, and VONA’s Dismantle. She has essays included or forthcoming in an anthology contemplating the 2020 pandemic, Alone Together, and the Greenwood Art Project catalogue, a 1921 Tulsa Massacre Centennial initiative. Her lamentation…

Safia Elhillo

A Pushcart Prize nominee, Safia Elhillo is Sudanese by way of Washington, DC. A Cave Canem fellow who received an MFA in poetry from The New School, her debut The January Childern (University of Nebraska Press, 2017) is praised by Kwame Dawes as “The first sound of what will be a remarkable noise in African…

Jasmine Elizabeth is a poet from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Her work is invested in the migration of Black communities in various historical contexts and eras. She is poetry editor and poetry programs specialist for the Black Lights Art Collective, a cohost of the show Baby Poet, and an educator in Southern California.

Chiyuma Elliot

Chiyuma Elliott is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her scholarly work focuses on poetry and the Harlem Renaissance. A former Stegner Fellow, Chiyuma’s poems have appeared in the African American Review, Callaloo, the Notre Dame Review, the PN Review, and other journals. She has received fellowships from…

Kelly Ellis

Ai Elo

Ai Elo is a contributing writer for the Indypendent News Paper, a worker’s rights and queer justice activist, and a freelance photojournalist.

Colin Enriquez

Naomi Extra

Naomi Extra is a freelance writer, poet, educator, and doctoral student in American Studies at Rutgers University-Newark. Naomi taught high school and worked as an adjunct professor for eight years before turning to scholarly work and creative writing full-time. Both her creative work and scholarship are centered on ways of imagining the corporeal realities of…

Kwoya Fagin Maples

Kwoya Fagin Maples is a writer from Charleston, S.C. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama, is a graduate Cave Canem Fellow and a Homeschool Lambda Literary Fellow. In addition to a chapbook publication by Finishing Line Press entitled Something of Yours (2010), her work is published in several journals…

Jennifer Falu

Chanda Feldman

Chanda Feldman grew up in Tennessee. She earned a MFA from Cornell University and a BA in English Literature from the University of Chicago. She has received fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Cave Canem, Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris, the Djerassi Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Community…

Camonghne Felix

Elizabeth Fields

Elizabeth Maria Fields is a Cave Canem poetry fellow and has been published in several print and on line publications including Wicked Alice, the Cave Canem Anthology XII, the Georgia Anthology: Stone, River, Sky, and Pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture. She earned her BA and MFA from the University of Georgia and…

Raina Fields

Reginald Flood

Cherryl Floyd-Miller

Cherryl Floyd-Miller is a poet/playwright/fiber artist working and living in her native North Carolina. She is a manager at a healthcare firm and teaches writing courses in her community. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Crab Orchard Review, Copper Nickel, Terminus, Poetry Southeast, North Carolina Literary Review, Warpland, Essence magazine and numerous anthologies. Her stage…

T'ai Freedom Ford

Aricka Foreman

Aricka Foreman is a writer, editor and educator from Detroit, MI. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Offing, Buzzfeed, Vinyl, RHINO, The Blueshift Journal, Day One, shuf Poetry, James Franco Review, THRUSH, Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poems for the Next Generation (Viking Penguin), among others. Author of the chapbook Dream with…

Brian Francis

Vievee Francis

Krista Franklin

Krista Franklin is a poet and visual artist whose poetry and collages have been published in Indiana Review, Ecotone, Clam, Callaloo, MiPOesias.com, CultureServe.net, and the anthology Gathering Ground. Her collages have been featured on the covers of award-winning books, and exhibited nationally in solo and group exhibitions. She is a Cave Canem Fellow, a co-founder…

Yolanda Jocelyn Franklin

I’m currently a PhD student in Poetry at Florida State University. 

Jay Frazier

Rico Frederick

Jonterri Gadson

Jonterri Gadson is Debra’s Daughter. A proud Cave Canem fellow, she is also a recent graduate of the University of Virginia’s Creative Writing MFA program and the Callaloo Creative Writers Workshop. In the Summer of 2013, she will complete the Pocantico Residency sponsored by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Her poems have previously appeared in Callaloo, The…

Deidre Gantt

Ross Gay

Kadeem Gayle

Hafizah Geter

Hafizah Geter received her BA in English & Economics from Clemson University, and her MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago. She is a South Carolina native currently living in Brooklyn, New York. Hafizah is a Cave Canem Fellow and was a semi-finalist for the 2010 “Discovery”/Boston Review Contest. Her poem “paula” received an Honorable…

Regie Gibson

Vonkeisha Gibson

Carmen Gillespie

Carmen Gillespie is a professor of English and director and founder of the Griot Institute for Africana Studies at Bucknell University. In addition to scholarly articles and poem publications, she is author of the literary critical works, A Critical Companion to Toni Morrison (2007), A Critical Companion to Alice Walker (2011), and the editor of Toni Morrison: Forty Years in the Clearing (2012).

Brian Gilmore

Aracelis Girmay

Kiala Givehand

Kiala Givehand is a storyteller, bookbinder, and LifeAlchemist™ who guides women to and through creative & spiritual awakenings. She combines creativity with intuition, ancient guidance systems, and intentional self-study as a way to radically cultivate happiness. Her deepest desire is to help women step into their greatness by helping them uncover (and write) their unique…

Ebony Noelle Golden

Hailing from Houston, TX, Ebony Noelle Golden is a cultural worker, artist, and creative director of Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative. She earned degrees from New York University (M.A.-Performance Studies), American University (M.F.A.-Poetry), and Texas A & M University (B.A.-English/Poetry).  A 2009 Pushcart Poetry Prize nominee, Ebony has taught, published and performed widely.  Her work has been supported by New York University, SpiritHouse, Alternate Roots, We Shall Overcome Fund, Fund…

Joy Gonsalves

Nicholas Goodly

LiAundra Grace

Natalie Graham

A native of Gainesville, Florida, Natalie Graham earned her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Florida and Ph.D. in American Studies at Michigan State University. Her poems have appeared in Callaloo, New England Review, Valley Voices: A Literary Review, and Southern Humanities Review; and her articles have appeared in The Journal of Popular Culture and Transition. She is a Cave…

Yalonda JD Green

  Yalonda JD Green is a poet, performing songwriter, scholar, and educator from Detroit, MI currently working on her creative dissertation in University of Louisville’s Humanities PhD program. She holds a BA in Literature (with Creative Writing emphasis) from Kentucky State University and an MA in Communication (with emphases in Rhetoric & Cultural Studies) from…

Tracy Grenville

Valencia Robin Grice

Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet, writer, painter, and photographer.  She received the MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and the MA in English Literature from the University of Delaware.  A 2007 Pushcart Nominee, she is the recipient of fellowships from Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Vermont Studio Center, Napa Valley Writers Conference,…

Alena Hairston

Tracie Hall

Kendra Hamilton

Richard Hamilton

Monica Hand

Rachel Harding

Myron Michael Hardy

  Myron Michael is a recording artist, writing teacher, and producer at Move or Die. His poetry appears online at Harvard Review, Outside in Literary and Travel Magazine, Pine Hills Review, Step Away Magazine, Rivet, and The Account; and in print in Toad Suck Review, Temenos, Fourteen Hills, Eleven Eleven, and Spillway. He received an…

Myronn Hardy

Janice N Harrington

Janice N. Harrington’s Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone (2007) won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize from BOA Editions and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award.  Formerly a librarian, she now teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois.

Alysia Nicole Harris

Alysia Nicole Harris hails from Alexandria, Virginia. She received her MFA in poetry from NYU and is currently a PhD candidate in linguistics at Yale University. Alysia is the 2015 Duncanson Artist-in-Residence at the Taft Art Museum in Cincinnati. Her chapbook How Much We Must Have Looked Like Stars To Stars was chosen by Finishing Line Press…

Duriel E Harris

francine j. harris

francine j. harris is a Cave Canem graduate and has work appearing in McSweeney’s “Poets Picking Poets”, Ninth Letter, Ploughshares, Boxcar and in an anthology by the AIDS Project of Los Angeles: to be left with the body.  She is currently pursuing an MFA in Poetry at the University of Michigan.

Kelly Harris

Reginald M Harris

A Pushcart Prize nominee and winner of the Cave Canem / Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize for Autogeography, his work has appeared on line and in various publications including African-American Review, BuzzFeed, Sou’wester; and The Ringing Ear anthology.

Yona Harvey

Shayla Hawkins

Why do I love to write? Why do I feel I must write? What am I supposed to write? Did I choose writing, or did writing choose me? And what gift can I possibly add to the trove of the world’s great literary treasures?   I’ve been pondering those questions, and many others, since childhood, and still am not entirely…

M. Ayodele Heath

  An Atlanta native, M. Ayodele Heath, is author of Otherness (Brick Road Poetry Press). Ayodele has been featured at such venues as the National Black Arts Festival, the Nuyorican Poets Café, the Turner Trumpet Awards, and TurnerSouth’s MySouth Speaks television campaign. Ayodele’s awards include: Atlanta Bureau for Cultural Affairs Emerging Artist grant, Pushcart Prize…

Tonya Hegamin

Marwa Helal

Abraham Henderson

Vida Henderson

zakia lorraine henderson-brown

though human, zakia is from outer space. 

K Henderson

K. Henderson is an antidisciplinary writer and musician whose performances have been featured in venues across the U.S. Their poems appear in the Iowa Review’s poetry month blog, ANMLY, and elsewhere. Their debut chapbook, Cruel Maths or Kind Proof, will appear in Black Warrior Review in Fall 2020. K. is a second-year MFA candidate in…

Niki Herd

Niki Herd earned degrees in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona and Antioch in Los Angeles. She is the recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her work has been supported by the Astraea Foundation and the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and has appeared in several…

Rage Hezekiah

Rage Hezekiah is a New England based poet and educator, who earned her MFA from Emerson College. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, MacDowell, and The Ragdale Foundation, and is a recipient of the Saint Botolph Foundation’s Emerging Artists Award. Her chapbook Unslakable (Paper Nautilus Press) is a 2018 Vella Chapbook Award Winner. Stray…

George Higgins

Nicole Higgins

Sean Hill

Normal 0 0 1 91 521 4 1 639 11.1282 0 0 0 Sean Hill is the author of Blood Ties & Brown Liquor (UGA Press, 2008).  His various fellowships and grants include fellowships from Cave Canem, The MacDowell Colony, and, most recently, a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University.  His poems have appeared or are…

Shamar Hill

Hallie S. Hobson

Chinaka Hodge

Andre O. Hoilette

André O. Hoilette is a Jamaican-born poet living in Denver, Colorado. He is a Cave Canem alumnus and the former editor of ambulant: A Journal of Poetry & Art and assistant editor of Nexus Magazine. He currently pursues MFAs in Fiction and Poetry from Regis University. 2020 nomination for Pushcart Prize. Previous publication in Stand…

Darrel Alejandro Holnes

Darrel Alejandro Holnes studied creative writing at the Universities of Houston and Michigan, the latter from which he earned a Masters of Fine Arts degree. His poetry has been published in Poetry Magazine, Best American Experimental Writing, Callaloo, Day One, and elsewhere in print and online. He is the co-author of PRIME: Poetry & Conversations, and…

Lita Hooper

Resides in Atlanta, GA. Teaches English at Georgia Perimeter College (associate professor). BA from DePaul University; MA from University of Colorado; DA from Clark Atlanta University. Published in anthologies and periodicals. Playwright and photographer. Author of a critical biography of Haki Madhubuti and two chapbooks. Founder and member of the Baobab Poetry Collective (www.baobabpoetrycollective.com) Chosen for…

Akua Lezli Hope

  A third generation Caribbean-American-New Yorker, firstborn, Akua Lezli Hope has won a Creative Writing Fellowship from The National Endowment for The Arts,  two Artists Fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Ragdale U.S.-Africa Fellowship,  Hurston-Wright writers fellowship, and the Walker Foundation Scholarship to Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. She is a Cave Canem…

Melanie Hope

Randall G Horton

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Randall Horton, originally from Birmingham, Alabama, resides in Albany, New York. He has a MFA from Chicago State and a PhD in Creative Writing at SUNY Albany. He is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of New Haven.  

Elisabeth Houston

Elisabeth Houston lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She writes and performs most regularly through her alter-ego aka baby aka “baaaby” – aka – “jenny lowenberg” – aka – ____________ . She is still determining the scope of her latest poetic project and she is still learning new words.

Juliet P. Howard

Juliet P. Howard (JP Howard) is a poet, lawyer, Cave Canem fellow and native New Yorker. She has been selected as a Lambda Literary Foundation 2011 Emerging LGBT Voices Fellow, as well as a 2011 Cave Canem Fellow-in-Residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA). JP was a finalist in the Astraea Lesbian…

Saleem Hue Penny

Saleem Hue Penny is a Black, neurologically- and hearing-impaired, ‘rural hip-hop blues’ poet. He is based in Chicago, with strong ties to Pisgah Forest, NC, and deep roots in Monck’s Corner, SC. He writes to young Black people traversing a world that has yet to embrace their potential. He is interested in the ways we…

Luther Hughes

Luther Hughes is the author of A Shiver in the Leaves (BOA Editions, 2022) and the chapbook Touched (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2018). He is the co-host of The Poet Salon with Gabrielle Bates and Dujie Tahat, and founder of Shade Literary Arts, a literary organization for queer writers of color. He is the recipient of…

Kate Hymes-Flannigan

Ashaki M. Jackson

Dr. Ashaki M. Jackson is the author of two chapter-length collections, including Language Lesson (Miel, 2016). She is a social psychologist and program evaluator residing in Los Angeles, California. Learn more at www.ashakijackson.com.

Gary Jackson

Born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, Gary Jackson is the author of the poetry collection Missing You, Metropolis, which received the 2009 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in Callaloo, Tin House, 32 Poems, Crab Orchard Review, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of both a Cave Canem and Bread Loaf fellowship, and…

Khary Jackson

  Khary is a performance poet, playwright, dancer and musician. A Detroit native, he currently resides in the Twin Cities where he serves as a teaching artist and writer. He has written 12 full length plays, one of which (Water) was produced in 2009 at Ink and Pulp Theatre in Chicago. He has been a…

Linda Susan Jackson

Major Jackson

Marcus Jackson

Marcus Jackson was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio.  After earning his BA at the University of Toledo, he continued his poetry studies in NYU’s graduate creative writing program and as a Cavem Canem fellow. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Harvard Review, and The Cincinnati Review, among many other publications.  His chapbook,…

Raven Jackson

Stacy Nathaniel Jackson

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Suzanne Jackson

Yvonne Alicia Jackson

Work has appeared in Chattahoochee Review,  Kenyon Review, Gettysburg Review, Obsidian II:Black Literature in Review, Beyond the Frontier, and The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, among others.  Named a Breadloaf Tuition Scholar and nominated for the Pushcart Prize in fiction. Winner of the 2007 Paumanok Prize in Poetry. Recipient of grants from the Barbara…

Safia Jama

Brionne Janae

Brionne Janae is a Southern California native who came to Boston to get an MFA at Emerson College. While in California, Brionne received her B.A. at U.C. Berkeley where she was a Student Teacher Poet in the Poetry for the People class/movement. As an STP Brionne had the privilege of teaching, learning and writing poetry…

Valerie Jean

Tyehimba Jess

Amaud Johnson

Brandon D. Johnson

Brandon D. Johnson is author of Love’s Skin, Man Burns Ant, The Strangers Between, and co-author of The Black Rooster Social Inn: This Is The Place. He is published in several journals and anthologies. He writes short stories and is a photographer. Born in Gary, Indiana, he received a BA from Wabash College and his JD from Antioch School…

Jacqueline Johnson

Jacqueline Johnson is a multi-disciplined artist creating in both poetry, fiction writing and fiber arts. She is the author of A Woman’s Season (Main Street Rag Press, 2015) and A Gathering of Mother Tongues (White Pine Press, 1998), winner of the Third Annual White Pine Press Poetry Award. Her work has appeared in: Revisiting the…

Karma Johnson

Patricia Johnson

Roxane Beth Johnson

Taylor Johnson

Amanda Johnston

Amanda Johnston earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine. She is the author of two chapbooks, GUAP and Lock & Key, and the full-length collection Another Way to Say Enter. Her work has appeared in numerous online and print publications, among them, Callaloo, Poetry Magazine, Puerto del…

Saeed Jones

Tyrone Jones

Quincy Scott Jones

A. Van Jordan

Carolyn Joyner

Bettina Judd

Kelli Stevens Kane

Kelli Stevens Kane is a poet, playwright, and oral historian based in Pittsburgh, PA. She’s a Cave Canem Fellow and an August Wilson Center Fellow, and has received Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh grants from The Pittsburgh Foundation. She’s studied at VONA, Hurston/Wright, and Callaloo. She’s read her poetry and oral history, and performed her…

Douglas Kearney

Douglas Kearney’s first full-length collection of poems, Fear, Some, was published in 2006 by Red Hen Press. His second manuscript, The Black Automaton, was chosen by Catherine Wagner for the National Poetry Series and will be published by Fence Books in 2009. In 2008, he was honored with a Whiting Writers Award. Kearney has performed his…

John Keene

Nzadi Keita

Nzadi Keita, a 2017 Pew Fellow in poetry, is a first-generation urban northerner. The Philly-born writer also works as an editor, scholar and teacher. Her most recent book, Brief Evidence of Heaven: Poems from the life of Anna Murray Douglass (Whirlwind Press), was a finalist for the 2015 Phillis Wheatley Poetry Prize from the Quarterly…

Donika Kelly (Ross)

Donika Kelly is the author of the chapbook AVIARIUM (fivehundred places 2017), and the full-length collection BESTIARY (Graywolf 2016), winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the 2017 Hurston/Wright Award for poetry, and the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. BESTIARY was long listed for the National Book Award (2016) and a finalist for a…

Alan Winston King

“A fixture on the D.C. MD VA scene since 1999, Alan has at one time blessed every Open Mic spot throughout the area. Mangoes, he was there; Brookland Cup Of Dreams, he was there. The “first” Java Head Cafe in College Park, he was there. The first Mocha Hut on 14th St, he was there.…

Ruth Ellen Kocher

Jaamil Kosoko

Jacqueline Jones LaMon

Currently President of Cave Canem’s Board of Directors and a member of the board since 2009, LaMon is the author of two collections of poems, Last Seen, a Felix Pollak Poetry Prize selection, and Gravity, U.S.A., recipient of the Quercus Review Press Poetry Series Book Award. Her novel, In the Arms of One Who Loves Me, was…

Quraysh Ali Lansana

Quraysh Ali Lansana is author of eight poetry books, three textbooks, three children’s books, editor of eight anthologies, and coauthor of a book of pedagogy. He is a faculty member of the Writing Program of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a former faculty member of the Drama Division of The Juilliard…

Ana-Maurine Lara

Rickey Laurentiis

Rickey Laurentiis was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, the Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and a Chancellor’s Fellowship from Washington University in St Louis, where he is completing his MFA. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in several journals, including Alaska…

Kateema Lee

Kateema Lee is a Washington D.C. native. Her recent work has been published in print and online journals such as Beltway Poetry Quarterly, African American Review, Gargoyle, Baltimore Review, and others. Kateema is the author of two chapbooks, Almost Invisible and Musings of a Netflix Binge Viewer. Her first collection, Transcript of the Unnamed (September…

Sherry Quan Lee

Sherry Quan Lee, MFA, 1996, University of Minnesota, and first year Cave Canem participant 1996 is the author of Love Imagined:  a mixed race memoir; a Minnesota Book Award Finalist 2015, Modern History Press, Ann Arbor, MI, and  How to Write a Suicide Note: serial essays that saved a woman's life, 2008, and Chinese Blackbird,  memoir in verse, 2002.  Lee…

Virginia Lee

Raina Leon

Robin Coste Lewis

ROBIN COSTE LEWIS’ writing has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, Callaloo, GCN, The Pocket Myth Series, and anthologized in Black Silk and The Encyclopedia Project, F-K. She was a finalist for the National Rita Dove Prize in 2004, and the 2010 War Poetry Prize.  A graduate of  Harvard’s Divinity…

Steven Leyva

Steven Leyva was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and raised in Houston, Texas. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in 2 Bridges Review, Scalawag, Nashville Review, jubilat, Vinyl, Prairie Schooner, and Best American Poetry 2020. He is a Cave Canem fellow and author of the chapbook Low Parish and author of The Understudy’s Handbook…

Toni Lightfoot

Gary Lilley

Essence London

Doc Long

April Lott

Kenyetta Lovings

Charles Lynch

devorah major

Minkah Makalani

Nick Makoha

The Founder of Obsidian Foundation Nick Makoha is a Ugandan poet and playwright and based in London. His debut Kingdom of Gravity was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize and nominated by The Guardian as one of the best books of 2017. A Cave Canem Graduate Fellow and Complete Works Alumni. He won the 2015…

Cynthia Manick

  Cynthia Manick is the author of Blue Hallelujahs forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press. A Pushcart Prize nominated poet with a MFA in Creative Writing from the New School; she has received fellowships from Cave Canem, The Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts & Sciences, the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Hedgebrook, and the Vermont Studio…

Erica Mapp

Artist and poet Erica Mapp, originally from Trinidad, lives in New York City. She received a BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art in New York and a MA in Art Education from New York University, School of Education. She is seeking publication for a poetry manuscript based on the paintings of Vincent Van…

Natasha Marin

Kim Marshall

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Kim Marshall is a biracial poet who considers herself from a little bit of everywhere due to the experience of traveling extensively during her childhood. This and other myriad tales about her life are present in her poetry along with her passion for community engagement. A vocal advocate, eager to…

Maya A. Marshall

Maya Marshall is a Chicago-based writer, editor, and poet. She is co-founder of  www. underbellymag.com. Marshall holds fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo, and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Her chapbook Secondhand was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2016. Marshall earned her MFA from the University of South Carolina, and she serves as a…

Nate Marshall

Nate Marshall is from the South Side of Chicago. His first book, Wild Hundreds (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. He is an editor of The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop (Haymarket Books, 2015). His rap album, Grown came out in 2015 with his group Daily Lyrical Product. He is a Visiting Assistant…

Kyla Marshell

Kyla Marshell’s work has appeared in Blackbird, Calyx, Gawker, The Guardian, O, the Oprah Magazine, and on the Poetry Foundation. Her work has earned her Cave Canem and Jacob K. Javits fellowships, two residencies to the Vermont Studio Center, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. In 2013, Ebony.com named her one of “7 Young Black…

Dawn Lundy Martin

Dawn Lundy Martin was awarded the 2006 Cave Canem Poetry Prize by Carl Phillips for her manuscript, A Gathering of Matter/A Matter of Gathering (University of Georgia Press, 2007). She is the author of The Morning Hour, selected in 2003 by C.D. Wright for the Poetry Society of America’s National Chapbook Fellowship. Among her honors…

Adrian Matejka

Adrian Matejka is the author of four collections of poems including The Big Smoke (Penguin, 2013) which a winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was finalist for the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize and Map to the Stars (Penguin, 2017). Among Matejka’s other honors are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation,…

Airea Matthews

Carolyn Matthews

andriniki mattis

Jamaal May

Jamaal May is the author of two chapbooks, The God Engine and The Whetting of Teeth. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. A graduate from Warren Wilson’s MFA program, Jamaal is a two-time finalist for the Ruth Lilly Fellowship, a two-time Individual World Poetry Slam finalist, and…

Trapeta Mayson

Shara McCallum

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Shara McCallum is the author of three individual collections of poetry, This Strange Land, Song of Thieves, and The Water Between Us.  Her fourth book, New and Selected Poems, will be published in the UK in September 2011.  Her poems have appeared in journals, anthologies, and…

Nathan McClain

Charleen McClure

JoAnne McFarland

JoAnne McFarland is a painter and poet working in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn. Her latest poetry collection Acid Rain received Honorable Mention in the inaugural Northwestern University Press Cave Canem Second Book Award. Her manuscript Watermarks was chosen as Finalist by Cornelius Eady in the 2002 AWP Award Series. Several of her publications have…

M'Bilia M. Meekers

M’Bilia Meekers is a poetry MFA student at NYU. She has won numerous awards, including the Mable Faun Poetry Award of 2011 and Tulane University’s Academy of American Poets Prize of 2015. Her work has previously appeared in Poet Lore, Tulane Review, and Killer Whale Journal. 

Ernesto Mercer

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Ernesto Mercer is a poet-multidisciplinary artist, teaching-artist and an independent scholar. His work incorporates many of the written and verbal arts from around the Atlantic African-American diasporas. For over 20 years he has created art works and performed across the US and beyond. A Cave Canem Alumni Fellow, since…

Constance Merritt

Constance Merritt is the author of three poetry collections: A Protocol for Touch (UNT 2000), Blessings and Inclemencies (LSU 2007), and Two Rooms (LSU 2009). Her awards include a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and the Porter Prize for Literary Excellence.  From 2002-2005 Merritt served as the Margaret…

Dante Micheaux

Dante Micheaux is the author of Amorous Shepherd (Sheep Meadow Press, 2010). His poems and translations have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Bloom, Callaloo, Gathering Ground and Rattapallax—among other journals and anthologies. He has been a guest of the Poetry Project and the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine. His honors include a…

Ciara Miller

Normal 0 false false false EN-US ZH-CN AR-SA Ciara Darnise Miller was born and raised on the West Side of Chicago. After becoming a  Louder than a Bomb poetry slam champion, she performed at various high schools and colleges throughout the United States, including: Lane Tech, North Side Prep, Berkeley High, Chicago Academy of the…

David Mills

Veronica Mitchell

Erica Monteiro

Jonathan Moody

Moody received his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and is a Cave Canem fellow. His poetry has appeared in African American Review, Crab Orchard Review, Gathering Ground, Gemini Magazine, good foot, The New Yinzer, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, PLUCK!, story South, Tidal Basin Review, and Xavier Review. He lives in Fresno, TX, with his wife & teaches tenth-grade English…

Kamilah Aisha Moon

A recipient of fellowships to the Prague Summer Writing Institute, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, Cave Canem and The Vermont Studio Center, Kamilah Aisha Moon‘s work has been featured or is forthcoming in several journals and anthologies, including Harvard Review, jubilat, Sou’wester, Oxford American, Lumina, Callaloo, Gathering Ground, Ringing Ear, Black Nature:…

Indigo Moor

Eddie Moore

Lenard Moore

Opal Moore

Renee Moore

Jessica Lanay Moore

Tracie Morris

Tracie Morris is a poet who’s worked as a page-based writer, sound poet, critic, recording artist, scholar, bandleader, actor, artist consultant, vocal coach and multimedia performer. She presents her work widely around the world. Her sound installations have been presented at the Whitney Biennial, MoMA, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Ronald Feldman Gallery, The Silent…

Cheswayo Mphanza

Harryette Mullen

John Murillo

John Murillo is the author of the collection, “Up Jump the Boogie” (Cypher 2010).  A graduate of New York University’s MFA program in creative writing, he has received fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, and the New York Times.  He is a two-time Larry Neal…

Annette L. Murrell

Annette L. Murrell (Dr Diva) is a jazz singer and writer.  She has produced and released two recordings: My Shining Hour and Annette Murrell: Live at the Zoo Bar!  She has published a chapbook titled I wanna be a bad woman. Educated at Stanford, the University of Nairobi in Kenya, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Annette has a…

Angel Nafis

Rachel Nelson

Rachel Nelson is a Cave Canem graduate fellow who received her MFA from University of Michigan. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Atlas Review, Callaloo, Hartskill Review, Little Patuxent Review, Muzzle Magazine, pluck!, Smartish Pace, and The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (Un. Georgia  Press, 2007). She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she’s facilitated a…

Joel Newsome

Nicholas Nichols

Nicholas (He/They) is based in Brooklyn, NY. They are an intersectional nerd and obsessed with talking/thinking/writing about all things creative and human.

Ashunda Norris

Ashunda Norris is country down to her bones. Born and raised in the heart of rural, red clay Georgia, she carries the spirits of her foremamas into the room each time, every time. Her honors include fellowships from Cave Canem, the New York State Summer Writer’s Institute and a residency at The Lemon Tree House.…

Glenn North

Catherine Ntube

January Gill O'Neil

January Gill O’Neil is an associate professor at Salem State University, and the author of Rewilding (2018), Misery Islands (2014), and Underlife (2009), all published by CavanKerry Press. From 2012-2018, she served as the executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, and currently serves on the boards of AWP, Mass Poetry, and Montserrat College of…

Mendi Lewis Obadike

Mendi Lewis Obadike makes literature, art, and music. She is the author of Armor and Flesh (2004), which won the Naomi Long Madgett Prize from Lotus Press. With her husband Keith Obadike, she composed The Sour Thunder, an Internet Opera and curated Crosstalk: American Speech Music (both from Bridge Records, 2004 & 2008). Their conceptual media artworks have been exhibited at the Whitney Museum, the New Museum,…

MofolaSayo Ogundiran

Natasha Oladokun

Ekoko Omadeke

Jadi Omowale

Jadi Z. Omowale is a writer, publisher, and teacher. She is co-owner of Three Sistahs Press, LLC an upstart, womanist publisher of books by women of color. She has had poetry published in Temba Tupu! Africana Women’s Poetic Self-Portrait, Essence magazine, Cave Canem Anthologies 2003 and 2004, Welter, and the Black Review. She is a Cave…

Ife-Chudeni A. Oputa

Ife-Chudeni A. Oputa is currently completing an MFA in Poetry and an MA in African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is a Cave Canem, Callalloo and Lambda Literary fellow. Her poetry and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in Some Call it Ballin, Matter, Crab Orchard Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books and elsewhere.…

Ladan Osman

Gregory Pardlo

Morgan Parker

Morgan Parker received her BA in Creative Writing and Anthropology from Columbia University and her MFA in poetry from NYU. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in numerous publications, including Painted Bride Quarterly, PANK, Forklift, Ohio, Vinyl Poetry, and the anthology Why I Am Not A Painter, published by Argos Books. In 2013, she was a…

Alexa Patrick

Alexa Patrick is a singer and poet from Connecticut. Alexa is a Cave Canem Fellow and 2019 Head Coach of the D.C. Youth Slam Team. She has held teaching positions through Split This Rock, The University of the District of Columbia, and the Center for Creative Youth at Wesleyan University. She has also coached the…

Shelagh Patterson

Carlo T. Paul

Carlo Toli Paul was born in Brooklyn, New York to Haitian parents. He is a graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park where his work first appeared in campus periodicals. His work also appears in Cave Canem anthologies.

Dustin Pearson

Dustin Pearson is the author of Millennial Roost (Eyewear Publishing, 2018). He is a McKnight Doctoral Fellow in Creative Writing at Florida State University. The recipient of a global fellowship from the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, Pearson has served as the editor of Hayden’s Ferry Review and a Director of the Clemson Literary Festival. He won…

Xandria Phillips

Xandria Phillips is a writer, abstract artist, and educator from rural Ohio. The recipient of the Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging Writers, and a LAMBDA Literary Award for their book HULL (Nightboat Books 2019), Xandria has received fellowships from Cave Canem, The Conversation Literary Festival, Oberlin College, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.…

Hermine D. Pinson

Hermine Pinson has published three poetry collections:  ‘Ashe, Mama Yetta and Other Poems, and Dolores is Blue/Dolorez is Blues.  She also released a cd Changine the Changes, in special collaboration with Yusef Komunyakaa and Estella Conwill Majozo.  Her poetry, fiction, and critical essays have appeared in anthologies such as  African American Review Callaloo, Cave Canem…

Cherise Pollard

Iain Haley Pollock

Iain Haley Pollock’s second collection of poems, Ghost, Like a Place, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in September 2018. His debut collection, Spit Back a Boy, won the 2010 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Writing in Library Journal, critic Louis McKee said of the collection, “Pollock listens well, and his dance is all strut and stomp, wild and…

Kathy Z. Price

Karisma Price

Karisma Price is from New Orleans, LA, and holds an MFA in poetry from New York University. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Four Way Review, Wildness, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem and New York University, was winner of 2019 Best of the Net Prize, a finalist for…

Lynne Nicole Claire Procope

LYNNE PROCOPE is a Cave Canem fellow and a former National Poetry Slam champion. She is co-author of the collaborative collection, Burning Down the House (Soft Skull). Her poems appear in Drum Voices Review 2000, Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry (Manic D Press), His Rib: Women’s Anthology (Penmanship), Bowery Women (YDK ) ,…

Stephanie Pruitt

Khadijah Queen

Khadijah Queen holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles and a BA in English from University of Maryland. She is the author of a poetry collection, Conduit (Black Goat/Akashic 2008), and recent work appears or is forthcoming in jubilat, In Posse Review, Powder: Writing by Women in the Ranks (Kore Press 2008), Fire and Ink: An Anthology of Social…

maisha quint

Julian Randall

Julian Randall is a Living Queer Black poet from Chicago. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, CantoMundo, Callaloo, BOAAT, Tin House, Milkweed Editions and the Watering Hole. Julian is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. Julian is the winner of the 2019 Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award from the Publishing Triangle. His poetry has…

Camille Rankine

Camille Rankine is the author of Slow Dance with Trip Wire, selected by Cornelius Eady for the Poetry Society of America’s 2010 New York Chapbook Fellowship. The recipient of a 2010 “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize, she is featured as an emerging poet in the fall 2010 issue of American Poet and the April 2011 issue…

Glenis Gale Redmond

  Bio   Glenis Redmond, a native of Greenville, South Carolina resides in North Carolina amongst the Cherokee mountains.  She graduated from Erskine College and is presently completing an MFA in Poetry at Warren Wilson College. Glenis is a NC Literary Fellowship Recipient from the North Carolina Arts Council and serves as a trustee on the NC…

Treasure Shields Redmond

A Mississippi native, Treasure Shields Redmond is a St. Louis-based poet, performer and educator. She has published poetry in such notable anthologies as Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Breaking Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cane Canem’s First Decade and in journals that include Sou’wester and  African American Review. She has received a fellowship…

Justin Phillip Reed

R. R. Reese

R. R. Reese is a Master of Fine Arts candidate at San Francisco State University and a graduate of Santa Clara University with a BA in English Literature.  His poems have appeared in the Poems Against War, Drunken Boat, Santa Clara Review, Monterey Journal, Authorizing Humanity, The Voice, and in other journals.  He is a Cave Canem Fellow and a…

Roger Reeves

Ro-Lyan Reid

Nate Lee Richardson

Katy Richey

Breauna L. Roach

Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE Breauna L. Roach is a native of Detroit, MI and a recipient of the Gwendolyn Brooks Writers Association’s Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in the Detroit Institute of Art, Little Patuxent Review, The New Sound, and various other publications. She is a proud Alumna of Florida…

Casey Rocheteau

Casey Rocheteau performs throughout the country, and has lead a variety of writing and performance workshops. She has been involved in slam poetry since 2003 including being a member of the 2012 Providence Slam Team. She’s released two albums on the Whitehaus Family Record, self published four books and her most recent book, Knocked Up…

Kenyatta Rogers

Kenyatta Rogers’ interest in writing began with scary stories and TV shows such as the Twilight Zone and R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series. While writing short stories as a child he began to focus more on poetry in high school. Being a native of the Cleveland area, he received his BA in English from the Kent…

Alison C. Rollins

Alison C. Rollins, born and raised in St. Louis city, currently works as a Librarian for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the second prizewinner of the 2016 James H. Nash Poetry contest and a finalist for the 2016 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry…

Christopher Rose

Magali Roy-Fequiere

  Magali Roy-Fequiere’s poems explore memory and the phenomenal world. A daughter of multiple diasporas, she sees community as a state of radical openness. Her interest in photography is an attempt to get to know things vividly and honestly. Born in Haiti, she studied movement with the legendary Lavinia Williams. At seven, her family moved…

Kamau Rucker

Kamau Rucker is a teacher and singer/songwriter. Additional work includes play writing. He is a Master of Fine Arts graduate in Creative Writing from George Mason University and a Cave Canem Fellow. Recent publication credits include: The Heat, The Day, and This Moment (San Francisco Bay Press), Conditions of Light (Pudding House Publications), Salamander, Drunken…

Kate Rushin

Lauren Russell

Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE Lauren Russell is the author of chapbooks including Dream-Clung, Gone (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2012). Her first full-length collection, “What’s Hanging on the Hush,” will be out from Ahsahta in 2017. Russell’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in print and online publications including eleven eleven, jubilat, Better, and…

Metta Sama

I live in three physical worlds and an innumerable number of pyschic worlds. I’m most at home in flight and walking, conversing, listening. I’m still taking photographs using an untrained eye & making paintings with an unskilled hand. But I’m joyous in these enterprises. If you’d like to check out some poems or reviews–of mine…

Aaron Samuels

  Aaron Samuels is a Cave Canem Fellow, a Pushcart-nominated poet, and a nationally acclaimed facilitator of critical identity discussions.  Raised in Providence, Rhode Island, by a Jewish-American mother and an African-American father, Aaron discovered spoken word poetry at age 14 when his English teacher told him he was not allowed to break meter.  After…

Gwen Samuels

Gwen T. Samuels, born in Florida and raised in New Jersey, was a K-12 teacher, college professor, and court interpreter for 30 years. She is a Fulbright Scholar with a degree in linguistics. Gwen has been published in Paterson Literary Review, Exit 13 Magazine, and Cave Canem anthologies. Her first poetry collection, 9 Patch Life,…

Sami D. Schalk

Sami Schalk is a feminist poet from Southgate, Kentucky. She received her Bachelor degrees in Creative Writing and Women’s Studies at Miami University of Ohio and her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Notre Dame. Sami is a Cave Canem fellow and member of Women Writing for (a) Change. Her work has appeared…

Tish Ann Seabrook

Nicole Sealey

Born in St. Thomas, U.S.V.I. and raised in Apopka, Florida, Nicole Sealey is the author of Ordinary Beast, forthcoming from Ecco in fall 2017, and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named, winner of the 2015 Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. Her other honors include an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from…

Shia Shabazz

Nancy Shakir

Charif Shanahan

Charif Shanahan is the author of Into Each Room We Enter Without Knowing (Southern Illinois University Press, 2017), winner of the 2015 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Prize. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous journals, including Apogee, Barrow Street, Boston Review, Literary Hub,  io: A Journal of New American Poetry, The Manhattanville Review, The New Republic, Prairie…

Aisha Sharif

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Aisha Sharif received her MFA in poetry from Indiana University, Bloomington.  Her work has appeared in Muslim Wakeup!, Touchstone Literary Journal,  Poemmemoirstory, Callaloo, and is forthcoming in Mythium.  She currently lives in Kansas City, Missouri.    

Sherina Rodriguez Sharpe

Stewart Shaw

Shaw has been published in various journal both online and print, most recently Serendipity Literary Magazine and African American Review. His upcoming chapbook, The House of Men, will be published in July 2019.

Ira Sher

Cherene M. Sherrard

Cherene Sherrard was born in Los Angeles. She is currently Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-where she teaches nineteenth and twentieth century American and African American literature, cultural studies and feminist theory. She is the author of Portraits of the New Negro Woman: Visual and Literary Culture in the Harlem Renaissance (Rutgers…

Tanya Shirley

Evie Shockley

Evie Shockley is a poet and scholar. Her most recent poetry collections are the new black (Wesleyan, 2011) and semiautomatic (Wesleyan, 2017); both won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the latter was a finalist for the Pulitzer and LA Times Book Prizes. She has received the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the Stephen Henderson Award,…

Kevin Simmonds

Kevin Simmonds is a writer, musician and filmmaker originally from New Orleans. His books include Mad for Meat, Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality and Ota Benga Under My Mother’s Roof. He’s performed his music throughout the US, Japan, the UK and the Caribbean. His musical works include HOPE: Living and Loving…

Renee Simms

giovanni singleton

Chris Slaughter

Danez Smith

Danez Smith is a Black, queer, poz writer & performer from St. Paul, MN. Danez is the author of [insert] boy (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017). Danez is also the author of two chapbooks, hands on your knees (2013, Penmanship…

John Warner Smith

John Warner Smith’s most recent collection of poems, Spirits of the Gods, was published by UL Press in 2017.  Other collections include Soul Be A Witness (MadHat Press, 2016) and A Mandala of Hands (Aldrich Press, 2015). Smith’s poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Callaloo, Antioch Review, North American Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Transition, Quiddity, and numerous…

Jonathan C. Smith

Mistinguette Smith

Rose Smith

Tracy K. Smith

Tracy K. Smith is the author of The Body’s Question (Graywolf Press 2003), which won the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and Duende (Graywolf Press, 2007), winner of the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets.  Her third collection, Life on Mars, will be published by Graywolf in 2011.  She has been a…

Clint Smith

L'Oréal Snell

L’Oréal Snell’s poems have appeared in Ithaca College’s IC View, Coon Bidness /SO4 Literary Magazine, Reverie: Midwest African American Literature, Cave Canem’s XI and XII anthologies, and theblackbottom.com. She has been a featured poet at the Shadow/Ava Lounge in Pittsburgh and The Studio Museum in Harlem. L’Oréal received a Master in Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction from Chatham University and a Master in Arts…

Folade Speaks-Love

Bianca Lynne Spriggs

Bianca Spriggs, is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Lexington, Kentucky. Currently a doctoral student at the University of Kentucky, she holds degrees from Transylvania University and the University of Wisconsin. Named as one of the Top 30 Performance Poets by TheRoot.com, Bianca is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and a recipient of  multiple Artist…

Christina Springer

Christina Springer is a text artist who uses poetry, dance, theatre,film and other visual expressions.  As an Outreach Artist for the Historic Royal Palaces, she delivered  four projects with youth: “Rapping On Walls,” “Black Birds & Bars,” “Bling & Beheadings”  at the Tower Of London and “Dragon Drap D’Or” at Hampton Court Palace from 2006…

Christopher D Stackhouse

Christopher Stackhouse is the author of Slip, Corollary Press 2005. He is co-author of the collaborative book Seismosis 1913 Press 2006, that features his drawings in philosophical discourse with texts by poet/fiction writer John Keene.

Rebecca Stewart

Lolita Stewart-White

Lolita Stewart-White is a poet who lives and works in Miami. She is a Cave Canem alumni and a Pushcart nominee. Her work has appeared in The Iowa Review, Rattle, Callaloo, Beloit Poetry Journal and Green Mountain Review. She has received fellowships from Callaloo’s Writers Workshop, The Betsy Hotel’s Writers Room and The Atlantic Center…

Shelby Stokes

Shelby Stokes has taught Upper School English at the Fieldston School since 2000. 

Darry Strickland

Tamika Sujuane

Laura Swearingen-Steadwell

Laura Swearingen-Steadwell’s second collection, All Blue So Late, won the Cave Canem Northwestern University Poetry Prize and was published by Northwestern University Press. She lives in Manhattan, and will be teaching at KCAI’s Foundation Program in spring 2021.

Warith M. Taha

Malcolm Tariq

Pamela L Taylor

Pamela Taylor is a data guru by day and a poet by night.  As co-organizer of Living Poetry, she sends out the Monday morning poetry prompts. She has a doctorate in social psychology from UCLA and a MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. When she is not working or writing, she’s dancing…

Nicole Terez Dutton

Amber Thomas

Sheree Thomas

Samantha Thornhill

Trinidadian born Samantha Thornhill wrote her first poem at 11.  She earned her Bachelors in creative writing from FSU & her Masters in poetry from UVA. As a performance poet, she has travelled as far as South Africa. Samantha teaches poetry to actors in training at the Juilliard School.  She lives in Brooklyn.

Venus Thrash

Cedric L Tillman

  Cedric Tillman hails from Anson County, NC and was raised in Charlotte.  He is a graduate of UNCC and The American University’s Creative Writing MFA program. In 2011, his manuscript, entitled Human Events, was a finalist for Flying Trout Press’ annual chapbook contest; a book-length collection, entitled A Lily in the Valley, was a semifinalist…

Ashley Toliver

Ashley Toliver splits her time between Portland, OR and Providence, RI where she is a first-year MFA candidate at Brown University.  Her work can be found in Third Coast, Caketrain, DIAGRAM and elimae journals, among others.

Imani Tolliver

Imani Tolliver is a poet, artist, and educator. She is a Cave Canem Fellow and served as Poet Laureate for the Watts Towers Arts Center. Tolliver is a recipient of the Avest Award for Literary Arts, the Howard University John J. Wright Literary Award, and the Lannan Literary Fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library. She has…

Qiana U.S. Towns

Qiana Towns earned a MFA from Bowling Green State University, and a MA from Central Michigan University where she served as poetry editor for the online literary journal Temenos. Her work has appeared in Tidal Basin, Milk Money, and is currently featured at poetsgulfcoast.wordpress.com. She is a Cave Canem fellow and Assistant Editor for Willow…

Jacqueline A. Trimble

Jacqueline Allen Trimble, Ph.D., lives and writes in Montgomery, Alabama, where she is the chairperson of Languages and Literatures at Alabama State University. Her work has appeared in The Offing, Blue Lake Review and The Griot. Her poetry collection, American Happiness, is published by NewSouth Books. The ironically titled book examines America’s refusal to grapple with hard truths, preferring instead the…

Jordan Valentine Tucker

Rachael Uwada Clifford is a writer, poet, and PhD student at Princeton.

Torrie Valentine

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon

Kevin Blane Vaughn

Kevin Vaughn is a doctoral student in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Georgia. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University and is a graduate fellow of the Cave Canem Foundation. His work has appeared in Mississippi Review, WheelHouse, Naugutuck River Review and Mythium and has appeared or is forthcoming…

Karen Wade

April Walker

Frank X Walker

Multi-disciplinary artist and Kentucky native, Frank X Walker, is the co-founder of the Affrilachian Poets and creator of the word Affrilachian. He is the author of five collections of poetry:Affrilachia, Black Box, Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, When Winter Come: The Ascension of York, Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride and the editor of…

Lillien Waller

Lillien Waller is a poet and editor of the anthology American Ghost: Poets on Life after Industry (Stockport Flats, 2011), which explores the impact of deindustrialization on community, culture, personal identity and the natural world. Waller holds a MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, as well as degrees from University of Michigan, the New…

Wendy S. Walters

Wendy S. Walters’ work resides at the intersection of the poem, essay and lyric drama. She is the author of the forthcoming book of poetry, Longer I Wait, More You Love Me (2009) and a chapbook, Birds of Los Angeles (2005), both published by Palm Press (Long Beach, CA).  Walters’ poetry has been recognized with residency fellowships from…

Jay Ward

Sasha Warner-Berry

Nagueyalti Warren

Nagueyalti Warren is a poet and professor of pedagogy emerita in African American Studies, Emory University. Her poetry has appeared in Essence Magazine , African American Review, Obsidian and anthologized in The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, Cave Canem Anthology,Obsession: Sestinas in the Twenty-First Century, 44 on 44, and Spaces Between Us. Margaret, a persona poem, won the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry…

Maya Washington

Maya Washington is a writer, actor, filmmaker, and arts educator making a difference in the world. She holds a BA from the University of Southern California and an MFA from Hamline University. Her work has appeared and is forthcoming in literary journals and anthologies including Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner, and The Playwright’s Center Monologues for Women (Heinemann Drama, 2005)…

Claudette Webster

Claudette M. Webster is a native of Jamaica, West Indies, and an educator, community organizer and facilitator.  She is a Cave Canem Fellow (2003, 2004) and a founding member of The Berkshire Festival of Women Writers.  Ms. Webster earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College in 2014; her thesis manuscript For All A We I…

Arisa White

Arisa White received her MFA from UMass, Amherst, and is the author of Perfect on Accident, You’re the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened, Black Pearl, Post Pardon, A Penny Saved, and Hurrah’s Nest. Her poetry has been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, NAACP Image Award, California Book Award and Wheatley Book Award. The chapbook “Fish Walking” & Other Bedtime Stories…

Marvin White

Marvin K. White is the author of four collections of poetry published by RedBone Press: Our Name Be Witness; Status; and the two Lammy-nominated collections last rights and nothin’ ugly fly. His poetry has been anthologized in The Road Before Us: 100 Black Gay Poets; My Brothers Keeper; Gents, Bad Boys and Barbarians: New Gay Writing; Things Shaped in Passing; Sojourner: Writing in the Age…

Simone White

Simone White is from Philadelphia. She is a graduate of Wesleyan University, Harvard Law School and The New School’s Graduate Program in Creative Writing. She is the author of House Envy of All the World (Factory School) and the limited edition collaborative chapbook Dolly (Q Ave Press), curated by Ross Gay, which includes the work…

Nicole White

Melissa Whitley

Carolyn Beard Whitlow

Awarded residencies at Yaddo, Soul Mountain, and Hedgebrook, Carolyn Beard Whitlow is Dana Professor of English at Guilford College in Greensboro, NC, where she has taught Creative Writing and African-American Literature since 1993. Finalist for the 1991 Barnard New Women Poets Prize, and the 2005 Ohio State University Poetry Prize, she completed the M.F.A. at…

Michelle Whittaker

Marcus Freddie Wicker

Marcus Wicker’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in jubilat, Crab Orchard Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Harpur Palate, Rattle, Ninth Letter, Sou’Wester, Mythium, DIAGRAM, and cream city review, among other journals. He is an Ann Arbor, Michigan native who holds an MFA from Indiana University. Marcus is also a 2010-2011 Fine Arts Work Center Fellow.

Daniel J Wideman

Tonya Wiley

Tonya Wiley is a poet, freelance writer, teaching artist and educator from New Haven, Connecticut. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from The University of Central Oklahoma and is currently pursuing her Master’s degree in Education and Montessori Elementary Teacher Certificate from the University of Hartford and the Montessori Training Center Northeast. Her work…

Caroline Williams

Ian Williams

Ian Williams is the author of You Know Who You Are, (poems, Wolsak and Wynn, 2010) and Not Anyone’s Anything (fiction, Freehand, forthcoming 2011). His writing has appeared in Gargoyle, jubilat, Rattle, Contemporary Verse 2, The Antigonish Review, Callaloo, Pebble Lake Review, Descant, and Matrix Magazine.  He has held residencies from the  Kimmel Harding Nelson Center…

Karen Williams

Lorelei Williams

Lorelei’s work has been recognized through fellowships from the Breadloaf Young Writer’s Conference and the New York Foundation for the Arts.  She has performed throughout NYC and globally.  Lorelei’s writings have appeared in Essence Magazine, Meridians Journal on Feminism, Race and Transnationalism, and African Voices – and in the anthologies Be the Dream (Algonquin Books); Beyond the Frontier:…

Phillip B Williams

0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false Phillip B. Williams is a Chicago, Illinois native. He is the author of the chapbooks Bruised Gospels (Arts in Bloom Inc. 2011) and Burn (YesYes Books, 2012). He is a Cave Canem graduate and received a Bread Loaf work-study scholarship in 2011 and Social…

El Williams III

El Williams III is a St. Louis native. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Journal, River Styx, Vinyl and elsewhere. He has received fellowships and scholarships from Cave Canem, Community of Writers, Tin House and The Watering Hole. Currently he lives in Bloomington, where he is an MFA…

Rashida Williams

Bakar Wilson

Keith S. Wilson

Keith S. Wilson spent the first 12 years of his life growing up in Torrance, California.  From there, he moved to Northern Kentucky where he currently resides.  He received his BA in English from Northern Kentucky University in 2008.   An Affrilachian Poet as well as Cave Canem Fellow, Keith has had his poetry acted…

L. Lamar Wilson

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4   L. LAMAR WILSON, Virginia Tech MFA ’10 and English PhD candidate at UNC-Chapel Hill, is the author of SACRILEGION, the 2012 Carolina Wren Press Series selection, a bronze medal winner of the 2013 Independent Publishers Group award, and a 2013 Thom Gunn Award finalist.…

Ronaldo Wilson

Bridgette Wimberly

Yolanda Wisher

Yolanda Wisher earned a B.A. in English/Black Studies from Lafayette College and a M.A. in Creative Writing/Poetry from Temple University.  At the age of 23, she was named the first poet laureate of Montgomery County where she grew up.  A Leeway Foundation Art and Change Award recipient, her poems have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer,…

Demetrice Anntía Worley

Demetrice Anntía Worley, an Illinois native, received a D.A. in English, Composition Theory and Pedagogy, with a concentration in creative writing, Illinois State University; a M.A. in English, University of Illinois, Urbana; and a B.A., cum laude, in English from Bradley University.   Her poetry honors include 2009 Split This Rock Poety Contest, Third Place Winner;…

Sharon Dennis Wyeth

Sharon Dennis Wyeth is the author of over fifty books for children, including “Something Beautiful” a Parents’ Best Book, and “Corey’s Underground Railroad Diaries.” Her work has been honored by The Children’s Book Council, Reading Rainbow, LAMBDA, and the New York Public Library. She has visited hundreds of schools promoting literarcy and is a keynote speaker at conferences and…

Toni Wynn

Avery R. Young