Contributors

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• Contributors

TONYA ABARI is a multigenre storyteller, independent journalist, author, and book reviewer. Her words can be found in Essence, Publishers Weekly, Parents, SWING Magazine, Raising Mothers, AARP, USA Today, Good Housekeeping, ZORA, and other places. She has published and forthcoming children's books with The Innovation Press, Mudpuppy, HarperCollins, Penguin, and Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. Abari is also a teaching artist with PorchTN and is the Books on Books on Books column editor for the literary magazine Raising Mothers. As a Hurston-Wright Writers Week and Carnegie Hall/Roots. Words.Wounds. creative nonfiction alum, her writing often centers on her multifaceted life as a Black woman and mother in the United States.

AMY M. ALVAREZ is an Affrilachian Poet, the author of the poetry collection Makeshift Altar, and a co-editor of Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology. Selected as one of 2022's Best New Poets, her work has appeared in several literary journals, including Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, Rattle, Colorado Review, and The Cincinnati Review. She is also a recipient of fellowships from CantoMundo, VONA, Macondo, the Virginia Center of the Creative Arts, and the Furious Flower Poetry Center.

ARIANA BENSON is a Southern Black ecopoet. Their debut collection, Black Pastoral (University of Georgia Press, 2023) won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Books Critics Circle Leonard Prize. A Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellow, Benson has also received the Furious Flower Poetry Prize and the Graybeal Gowen Prize for Virginia Poets. Her poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Ploughshares, Poem-a-Day, The Yale Review, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Through her writing, she strives to fashion vignettes of Blackness that speak to its infinite depth and richness.

TORLI BUSH is a poet from Webster Springs, West Virginia. They are currently a poetry editor for Heartwood and their first collection, Requiem for a Redbird, is forthcoming in fall 2024 from Pulley Press.

JAMES E CHERRY is a poet, fiction writer, professor, literary activist, and impresario. He is the author of four books of poetry, two novels, and a collection of short fiction. His latest novel, Edge of the Wind, was re-issued in 2022 from Stephen F. Austin University Press. His latest collection of poetry, Between Chance and Mercy, is forthcoming from Willow Books. He has been nominated for an NAACP Image Award, a Lillian Smith Book Award, and a Next Generation Indie Book Award. His writing has been published in journals and anthologies both in the U.S. and internationally. Cherry has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at El Paso and resides in Tennessee with his wife, Tammy.

C. CHOICE is a daughter, sister, auntie, artist, activist, educator, dreamer, lover, Black/queer black sheep, wanderer. Born and raised in Georgia, now living in the mountains of North Carolina, Choice's practice considers the layered interconnectivity of identities and how those weigh up against the environments and systems they move through.

MARIE T. COCHRAN received degrees from the University of Georgia (BFA) and the School of the Art Institute in Chicago (MFA). Her work has been exhibited widely, including at The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library and Museum, Austin, TX; the former Center for African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC; and the Studio Museum of Harlem. Cochran's art awards include a Georgia Council for the Arts Individual Artist's Grant, an Artist as Catalyst grant from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Council, a Southern Arts Federation Fellowship, an NEA Fast-Track Challenge Grant, and support from the We Shall Overcome Fund sponsored by the Highlander Center. Cochran is the founding artist/curator of the Affrilachian Artist Project, which celebrates the unique perspective of people of African descent in the Appalachian region.

MARLANDA DEKINE is from Plantersville, South Carolina. She is the author of Thresh & Hold (Hub City Press, 2022), Winner of the New Southern Voices Poetry Prize, and i am from a punch & a kiss ({unnamed}, LLC, 2017). She has received an Individual Artist Fellowship from The South Carolina Arts Commission, a Governor's Award from SC Humanities, a...