Be)Holding: Poems of Love and Loss | September-October 2023

Ai

Ai is the author of eight poetry collections, including Vice: New and Selected Poems (1999), winner of the National Book Award for Poetry; Sin (1986), winner of the American Book Award; and Killing Floor (1979), the Lamont Poetry Prize winner. Ai was a tenured professor and the Vice President of the Native American Faculty and Staff Association at Oklahoma State University, until her passing in 2010. She also received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Bunting Fellowship Program at Radcliffe College.

TJ Jarrett

TJ Jarrett is the author of Zion (2014) and Ain’t No Grave (2013). She has been anthologized in Best American Nonrequired Reading (2015) and Language Lessons (2014). She currently works as a writer and software developer in Nashville, Tennessee. Her work has been featured in journals such as the African American Review, Boston Review, and Poetry Magazine among others. In 2017, Jarrett was awarded the George Garrett New Writing Award by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. She also received the Emily Clark Balch Prize for Poetry, scholarships from the Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference, fellowships from Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and was a runner up for the New Issues Poetry Prize. 

Joel Dias-Porter

Joel Dias-Porter is an award-winning poet, who has written for both stage and page. In addition to his own CD of jazz and poetry, LibationSong (2002), Dias-Porter is featured on the CD anthology Meow: Spoken Word from the Black Cat (1996). His poetry has been published in the anthologies Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam (2001) and Catch The Fire!!!: A Cross-Generational Anthology of Contemporary African-American Poetry (1998). He also worked for several years as a professional DJ, and is known as “DJ Renegade.” Dias-Porter’s honors include James Madison University’s Furious Flower Emerging Poet Award, a second-place finish in the National Poetry Slam’s individual competition, and two first place awards at the Haiku Slam Championship. He is also a Cave Canem Fellow and a member of Writer Corps.

Jericho Brown

Jericho Brown won the Pulitzer Prize for his poetry collection The Tradition (2019). His other award-winning books include Please (2008), winner of the American Book Award, and The New Testament (2014), winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. Brown also edited the anthology, How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill (2023). After teaching at several universities, he is now the director of the Creative Writing Program and a professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He is the recipient of the Whiting Writers Award, as well as fellowships from The Guggenheim Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard.

Lauren K. Alleyne

Lauren K. Alleyne is the author of two collections of poetry, Difficult Fruit (2014), and Honeyfish (2019); two chapbooks, Dawn in the Kaatskills (2008) and (Un)Becoming Gretel (2022). She is also the co-editor of Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry (2020). Her work has been anthologized in Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade (2006) and Let Spirit Speak! Cultural Journeys through the African Diaspora (2012). She currently works at James Madison University as the Executive Director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center, the nation’s first academic center dedicated to Black poetry, and as a Professor in English. In 2022, she was awarded an Outstanding Faculty Award by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. Alleyne was also nominated for the 2020 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry. 

Natasha Trethewey

Natasha Trethewey has served as both U.S. poet laureate and the poet laureate for the state of Mississippi. She is the author of several collections of poetry, including Domestic Work (2000), which was selected by Rita Dove as the winner of the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize,and Native Guard (2006), which received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her other works include Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002), Thrall (2012), and Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir (2020). Trethewey serves as the Board of Trustees Professor of English at Northwestern University. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and received the Heinz Award for Arts and Humanities. Trethewey has served as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and was awarded the 2020 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt Prize for Poetry. She was also the 2022 William B. Hart Poet in Residence at the American Academy in Rome. 

Roger Reeves

Roger Reeves is the author of Best Barbarian (2022), a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and Griffin Poetry Prize. His debut collection, King Me (2013), won the Levis Reading Prize, the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, and a John C. Zacharis First Book Award. His poems have also been published in journals such as American Poetry Review, Boston Review, and Tin House, among others. His first book of prose, Dark Days: Fugitive Essays, was published in 2023. Previously a fellow at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Reeves is currently an associate professor of English and creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin. Winner of a Whiting Award and a Pushcart Prize, Reeves has earned several fellowships and scholarships, including a NEA Fellowship, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, a Hodder Fellowship, two Bread Loaf Scholarships, an Alberta H. Walker Scholarship, and two Cave Canem Fellowships. 

Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie

Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie is the author of Strut (2018), Dear Continuum: Letters to a Poet Crafting Liberation (2015), and Karma’s Footsteps (2011). Tallie is also the author of the award-winning children’s book, Layla’s Happiness (2019). Her work has appeared in anthologies such as Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, The Golden Shovel Anthology, and Bum Rush The Page: A Def Poetry Jam, among others. Tallie is the recipient of a 2010 grant from the Queens Council on the Arts, and from 2013 to 2017 she served as the poetry editor of African Voices. She is also the subject of the short film, “I Leave My Colors Everywhere.” She is currently pursuing a PhD in Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University.