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.