Arisa White

Arisa White is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at Colby College. She is the author of Who’s Your Daddy, co-editor of Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart, and co-author of Biddy Mason Speaks Up, the second book in the Fighting for Justice Series for young readers. Her poetry is widely published and her collections have been nominated for an NAACP Image Award, Lambda Literary Award, and has won the Per Diem Poetry Prize, Maine Literary Award, Nautilus Book Award, and an Independent Publisher Book Award. As the creator of the Beautiful Things Project, Arisa curates poetic collaborations that are rooted in Black queer women’s ways of knowing. She is a Cave Canem fellow and serves on the board of directors for Foglifter and Nomadic Press, as well as the Community Advisory Board for Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Arisa is currently working on an Afro-speculative opera, set between the material and spiritual worlds, where three females’ lives intersect because of a murder-suicide. Post Pardon: The Opera, in development with composer Jessica Jones, is a transgenerational apology.

You can connect with Arisa here:
Website
Instagram

Work Samples::
Black Women in the Poetry Archives
The Poetry Center Digital Archives, San Francisco State University

The Lorde’s Work: Poem “Suffer the Children,” from The First Cities (1968)

“News” & “That’s my problem” | ITERANT Issue 4

From Who’s Your Daddy | Zocalo Public Square

“My Dead” | The Quarry: Split This Rock Poetry Database