Description
Poetry. LGBTQIA Studies. California Interest. African & African American Studies. Women's Studies. Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Lesbian Poetry. Angular, smart, and fearless, Arisa White's newest collection takes its titles from words used internationally as hate speech against gays and lesbians, reworking, re-envisioning, and re-embodying language as a conduit for art, love, and understanding. "To live freely, observantly as a politically astute, sensually perceptive Queer Black woman is to be risk taker, at risk, a perceived danger to others and even dangerous to/as oneself," writes poet Tracie Morris. "White's attentive word substitutions and range of organized forms, lithe anecdotes, and disturbed resonances put us in the middle of living a realized, intelligent life of the senses." YOU'RE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING THAT HAPPENED works through intersectional encounters with gender, identity, and human barbarism, landing deftly and defiantly in beauty.
Author Bio
Arisa White is a Cave Canem fellow and the author of WHO'S YOUR DADDY (Augury Books, 2021), YOU'RE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING THAT HAPPENED (Augury Books, 2016), A PENNY SAVED (Aquarius Press/Willow Books, 2012), BLACK PEARL (Nomadic Press, 2016), 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 for My Wife won the inaugural Per Diem Poetry Prize. She's the coauthor of Biddy Mason Speaks Up, winner of the Maine Literary Book Award for Young People's Literature and the Nautilus Book Award Gold Medal for Middle-Grade Nonfiction. As the creator of the Beautiful Things Project, Arisa curates poetic collaborations that center narratives of queer people of color. She serves on the board of directors for Foglifter and Nomadic Press and is an assistant professor of creative writing at Colby College.
Author City: OAKLAND, CA USA