Tawanda Mulalu | Fall 2025 | Vol. 9 Iss. 2
Tawanda Mulalu’s first full-length poetry collection Please make me pretty, I don’t want to die was selected by Susan Stewart for the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets and is listed as a best poetry book of 2022 by The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. The collection was also awarded the African Poetry Book Fund’s 2023 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. His chapbook Nearness, was chosen as the winner of The New Delta Review 2020-21 Chapbook contest by Brandon Shimoda… READ MORE
Evie Shockley | Summer 2025 | Vol. 9, Iss. 1
Evie Shockley’s poetry collections include suddenly we, and the Hurston/Wright Award-winning books the new black and semiautomatic, the latter of which was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the LA Times Book Prize. Her scholarly work has been published in her book Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry, and in such journals and volumes as The Black Scholar… READ MORE
Shara McCallum | Spring 2025 | Vol. 8, Iss. 4
Shara McCallum is a poet, educator, and widely published author. Her works include Behold (forthcoming in 2026); No Ruined Stone (2021), winner of the 2022 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry; Madwoman (2017), winner of the 2018 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature in Poetry; The Face of Water: New and Selected Poems (2011); This Strange Land (2011); Song of Thieves (2003); and The Water Between Us (1999), winner of the 1998 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. McCallum has received fellowships from Cave Canem… READ MORE
Mahogany L. Browne | Winter 2025 | Vol. 8, Iss. 3
Mahogany L. Browne, a Kennedy Center’s Next 50 fellow, is a writer, playwright, organizer, & educator. Browne received fellowships from All Arts, Arts for Justice, Air Serenbe, Baldwin for the Arts, Cave Canem, Hawthornden, Poets House, Mellon Research, Rauschenberg, Wesleyan University, & UCross. Browne’s books include Vinyl Moon, Chlorine Sky (optioned for a play by Steppenwolf Theater), Black Girl Magic, and banned books Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice and Woke Baby. Founder of the diverse lit initiative Woke Baby Book Fair, Browne… READ MORE
Shane McCrae | Fall 2024 | Vol. 8, Iss. 2
McCrae is the author of several poetry collections, including Mule, Blood, Forgiveness Forgiveness (2014); The Animal Too Big to Kill, In the Language of My Captor, which was a finalist for the National Book Award; The Gilded Auction Block, Sometimes I Never Suffered, and Cain Named the Animal. His memoir Pulling the Chariot of the Sun, released in 2023, details his early life, in which he was kidnapped by his maternal grandparents at the age of three, and raised to believe that his father had abandoned him. His poetic work has been featured in… READ MORE
Samantha Thornhill | Summer 2024 | Vol. 8, Iss. 1
Samantha Thornhill—also known as Samantha Raheem or Lady Griot—is a poet, performer, educator, and producer from the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. After launching her spoken word career by joining Back Talk at the request of Keith Rogers, Thornhill released three three spoken word albums, Lady Griot, Odelicious Poems, and Merror, Mirror: The Art of Self Reflection. For 10 years she taught poetry and performance to actors at the world-renowned Juilliard School… READ MORE
Safia Elhillo | Spring 2024 | Vol. 7, Iss. 3
Sudanese-American poet, Safia Elhillo is the award-winning author two collections of poetry, The January Children and Girls That Never Die, as well as the novels-in-verse Home Is Not A Country, and the recently published Bright Red Fruit. She is also co-editor of the anthology Halal If You Hear Me. Her work has appeared in POETRY, Callaloo, and The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day series, among others… READ MORE
Erica Hunt | Winter 2024 | Vol. 7, Iss. 2
Erica Hunt is the author of Local History, Arcade, Piece Logic, Time Flies Right Before the Eyes, VERONICA: A Suite in X Parts and, most recently, Jump the Clock. Hunt’s poets and non-fiction have appeared in BOMB, Boundary 2, Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions, The Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. Hunt’s essays on poetics, feminism, and politics have been collected in… READ MORE
Mervyn Taylor | Fall 2023 | Vol. 7, Iss. 1
Mervyn Taylor, a Trinidad-born poet and longtime Brooklyn resident, is the author of eight books of poetry, including The Waving Gallery (2014), and Country of Warm Snow (2020), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation that was listed for the Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. His most recent collections, the chapbook, News of the Living: Corona Poems and a full-length collection, The Last Train, were published by Broadstone Books… READ MORE
Kei Miller | Spring 2023 | Vol. 6, Iss. 4
It is no exaggeration to say Dr. Kei Miller is one of the Caribbean’s premiere contemporary writers. Educated in Jamaica, England and Scotland, Miller is the award-winning author of 12 books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, as well as editor of a collection of contemporary Caribbean writers. His work is internationally recognized—his fiction and nonfiction has won the Prix les Afriques and Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe et du Tout-Monde, as well as the OCM Bocas prize for Caribbean Literature, and his poetry has been awarded the prestigious Forward prize… READ MORE
Malika Booker | Winter 2023 | Vol. 6, Iss. 3
Malika Booker is a lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, a British poet of Guyanese and Grenadian Parentage, and co-founder of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (A writer’s collective). The anthology Two Young, Two Black, Too Different: Poems from Malika’s Poetry Kitchen was recently published to celebrate Malika Poetry Kitchen’s twenty-year anniversary. Her pamphlet Breadfruit, (flippedeye, 2007) received a Poetry Society recommendation and her poetry collection Pepper Seed (Peepal Tree Press, 2013) was shortlisted for the OCM Bocas prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre 2014 prize for first full collection. She is published with the poets Sharon Olds and Warsan Shire in The Penguin Modern Poet Series 3: Your Family: Your Body (2017). Booker and Shara McCallum recently co-edited the issue of Stand Journal curating an anthology of poems by African American, Black British, & Caribbean Women & Identifying Writers. Booker currently hosts and curates Peepal Tree Press’s Literary podcast, New Caribbean Voices.” READ MORE
Khadijah Queen | Fall 2022 | Vol. 6, Iss. 2
Khadijah Queen, PhD, is the author of six books, most recently Anodyne (Tin House 2020), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America and a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Her fifth book is I’m So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On (YesYes Books 2017), praised in O Magazine, The New Yorker, Rain Taxi, Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere as “quietly devastating” and “a portrait of defiance that turns the male gaze inside out.” READ MORE
Tim Seibles | Summer 2022 | Vol. 6, Iss. 1
Tim Seibles’ career as a poet spans over 4 decades. He is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Body Moves (1988), Hurdy Gurdy (1992), Fast Animal(2012), and most recently Voodoo Libretto(2022). His poems have been published widely in journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry. He has taught at Cave Canem, the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA program, and at Old Dominion University, where he is a professor emeritus of English. READ MORE
Amanda Johnston | Spring 2022 | Vol. 5, Iss. 3
Poet, activist and arts administrator Amanda Johnston is founder of Torch Literary Arts, a non-profit dedicated to promoting and publishing the work of Black women writers, co-founder of Black Poets Speak Out, and former board president and retreat coordinator of Cave Canem. Johnston’s writing has been widely published in journals and anthologies such as Callaloo, Poetry, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, and Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism. She is author of the poetry collection, Another Way to Say Enter (Argus House Press, 2017)… READ MORE
A. Van Jordan | Winter 2022 | Vol. 5, Iss. 2
A. Van Jordan is the author of four collections of poetry: Rise, M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A, Quantam Lyrics, and The Cinaste. His most recent work is I Want to See My Skirt, a collaborative chapbook with Cauleen Smith. Jordan has received numerous accolades over the course of his career, including grants from the Whiting, PEN, Lannan and John Simon Guggenheim foundations, a United States Artists Fellow award, a Pushcart Prize, and an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, among others. READ MORE
Cyrus Cassells | Summer 2021 | Vol. 5, Iss. 1
Cyrus Cassells is a lauded poet, translator and cultural critic. His poetry has been recognized with honors including a Guggenheim fellowship, the National Poetry Series Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, a Lannan Literary Award, two NEA grants, a Pushcart Prize, and the William Carlos Williams Award. His collection The Gospel according to Wild Indigo (2018), was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award, and his 1994 collection Soul Make A Path Through Shouting, was nominated for the Pulitzer… READ MORE
Jaki Shelton Green | Spring 2021 | Vol. 4, Iss. 4
Jaki Shelton Green is the first African American and third woman to be appointed as the North Carolina Poet Laureate. Her highly lauded work has earned her multiple recognitions, including the 2020 Shaw University Ella Baker Women Who Lead Award, 2020 St. Andrews University Fortner Award, 2020 Lucy Bramlette Patterson Award for Excellence in Creative Writing...READ MORE
Brenda Marie Osbey | Winter 2021 | Vol 4, Iss. 3
Brenda Marie Osbey is a poet, essayist, librettist and editor who works in English and French. Her seven books include All Souls: Essential Poems (Lousiana State University Press, 2015), History and Other Poems (Time Being Books, 2013) and the limited edition chapbook 1967 (William & Mary, 2018, 2019)… READ MORE
Nikki Giovanni | Fall 2020 | Vol. 4, Iss. 2
Nikki Giovanni is a cultural and literary legend. She has received numerous awards for her work, including seven NAACP Image awards for poetry, the Langston Hughes Medal for poetry, The Rosa L. Parks Woman of Courage Award … READ MORE
jessica Care moore | Summer 2020 | Vol. 4, Iss. 1
jessica Care moore burst onto the poetry scene with a bang, winning the legendary “It’s Showtime at the Apollo” 5 times in a row with her poem “Black Statue of Liberty.” Since then, moore has gone on to… READ MORE
Matthew Shenoda | Winter/Spring 2020 | Vol. 3, Iss. 3
Award-winning poet Matthew Shenoda wears several hats. He is a professor and university administrator currently serving as Associate Provost for Social Equity and Inclusion, as well as Professor of Literary Arts and Studies at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) … READ MORE
Dominique Christina | Fall 2019 | Vol. 3, Iss. 2
When Dominique Christina stepped onto the poetry stage it was clear she was a force to be reckoned with. In her three years of performance she earned five national poetry slam titles … READ MORE
Nate Marshall | Summer 2019 | Vol. 3, Iss. 1
From his leading role in the much-acclaimed documentary Louder Than A Bomb, which chronicles the journey of four teams as they prepare to compete in a national poetry contest, to his work today … READ MORE
Tyehimba Jess | Spring 2019 | Vol. 2, Iss. 4
… author of two award-winning collections of poetry: Leadbelly (Wave Books, 2005), which was a National Poetry Series award winner, and Olio (Wave Books, 2017), which won … READ MORE
Marilyn Nelson | Winter 2019 | Vol. 2, Iss. 3
… author of more than 20 books — edited, translated, and written — Marilyn Nelson is, without question, a literary luminary. Her award-winning work speaks to a range of audiences … READ MORE
Kwame Dawes | Fall 2018 | Vol. 2, Iss. 2
… author and editor of more than 45 books of fiction, poetry, and criticism, Dawes is without doubt one of the most prolific writers of our time. He was born in Ghana, raised in Jamaica … READ MORE
Anastacia-Reneé | Summer 2018 | Vol. 2, Iss. 1
… current Civic Poet of Seattle, recipient of the 2017 Artist of the Year, and former 2015-2017 Poet-in-Residence at Richard Hugo House. Anastacia-Reneé is the author of two full-length collections … READ MORE
Yusef Komunyakaa | Spring 2018 | Vol. 1, Iss. 4
… Born in Bogalusa, Louisiana in 1947, Yusef Komunyakaa is a son of the South. He served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, an experience that infused his creative career. Since writing his first poem … READ MORE
Patricia Smith | Winter 2018 | Vol. 1, Iss. 3
… the prolific and powerful Patricia Smith, winner of a 2018 NAACP Image Award for her most recent collection, Incendiary Art. Author of ten books including Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah … READ MORE
Danez Smith | Fall 2017 | Vol. 1, Iss. 2
… poet and National Book Award Finalist Danez Smith. Smith is the author of the Lambda Award-winning [insert] Boy (YesYes Books, 2014), the chapbook Black Movie … READ MORE
Gregory Pardlo | Summer 2017 | Vol. 1, Iss. 1
In this first issue of the new series, The Fight & The Fiddle presents Pulitzer Prize winner Gregory Pardlo, whose wit, lyric intensity, fierce intelligence and sense of play all come to bear … READ MORE
The Fight & The Fiddle was originally conceived as an online literary magazine by Elizabeth Hoover, the Assistant Director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center from 2014 to 2016. Under her direction, the publication featured interviews with Reginald Dwayne Betts, Ross Gay, Yona Harvey, Dawn Lundy Martin, Nadine Pinede, and Karenne Wood. It included a special series on Amiri Baraka and Jayne Cortez as architects of the Black Arts Movement. To see these early entries, visit https://www.jmu.edu/furiousflower/fightandfiddle/
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