For Black History Month, observed annually during the month of February, we asked our members—independent presses, literary journals, and others—to share with us some of the books and magazines they recommend reading in celebration.
Fiction
The Wishing Pool and Other Stories by Tananarive Due
Akashic Books | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-636141-79-4
The paperback reissue of Due’s second short story collection includes offerings of horror, science fiction, and suspense and features two new stories.
My Lesbian Novel by Renee Gladman
Dorothy, a publishing project | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-948980-23-4
Gladman’s work is “a beautifully orchestrated dialogue between reflection and desire, or clarity and confusion, between the pleasures of formula and the pleasures of freedom in the unspooling of sentences over time.”
Dzanc Books | 2016
ISBN: 978-1-938103-37-7
In these linked short stories, Holman “illuminates issues of race and class within the context of one man’s search for love and belonging.”
The Maroons: An Abolitionist Novel by Louis Timagène Houat
Translated from the French by Aqiil Gopee with Jeffrey Diteman
Restless Books | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-632063-55-7
The only known novel by Black abolitionist and political exile Louis Timagène Houat,The Maroons is “a fervid account of slavery and escape on nineteenth-century Réunion Island.”
Obligations to the Wounded by Mubanga Kalimamukwento
University of Pittsburgh Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-0-8229-4836-0
The short stories in this Firecracker Award–winning collection explore “the expectations and burdens of womanhood in Zambia and for Zambian women living abroad.”
The Shipikisha Club by Mubanga Kalimamukwento
Dzanc Books | 2026
ISBN: 9781938603754
In this novel, “Sali, a working mother of three, stands trial for the murder of her husband, Kasunga.”
You Were Watching from the Sand by Juliana Lamy
Red Hen Press | 2023
ISBN: 978-1-636281-05-6
You Were Watching from the Sand is a Firecracker Award–winning collection “in which Haitian men, women, and children—who find their lives cleaved by the interminably strange—bite back at the bizarre with their own oddities.”
Born at the End of the World by Donica Merhazion
Catalyst Press | 2026
ISBN: 9781960803337
In this historical novel, “13-year-old Elen, determined to escape her arranged marriage to an old man, absconds from Ethiopia to Eritrea, hoping to find her aunt living in the capital city, Asmara.”
Amapiano Eyes by D. Nandi Odhiambo
Book*hug Press | 2026
ISBN: 9781771669702
According to Tom Gammarino, this novel is “as hybrid a creation as the South African musical genre that gives it its name, fusing a philosophical frame with a high-octane Bonnie and Clyde story that careens from Waikīkī to Nairobi to Winnipeg.”
Boa Editions | 2021
ISBN: 978-1-950774-31-9
This collection of eighteen stories “breaks down the concept of foreignness to reveal what unites us all as ‘aliens’ within a complex and interconnected universe.”
Inlandia Institute | 2023
ISBN: 978-1955969185
This anthology edited by Romaine Washington “provides snapshots of the human condition in melanated skin and kinky hair from established and emerging writers and artists in the Inland Empire and Los Angeles area.”
Trigger Warning by Jacinda Townsend
Graywolf Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64445-354-4
Townsend’s novel explores “divorce and desire, the heartbreaking brevity of parenting, the push and pull of old friendships, and the possibility, after incredible trauma, of reconnecting to what makes us feel alive.”
The Middle Daughter by Chika Unigwe
Dzanc Books | 2023
ISBN: 9781950539468
In this modern reimagining of the myth of Hades and Persephone, Nani “must find the courage to break free and wrestle her life back—without losing what she loves most.”
The Lion’s Binding Oath and Other Stories by Ahmed Ismail Yusuf
Catalyst Press | 2018
ISBN: 978-1-946395-07-8
Through stories spanning the years before and during Somalia’s civil war, Yusuf “weaves together Somalia’s political, social, and religious conflicts with portrayals of the country’s love of poetry, music, and soccer.”
Poetry
The Mansion: Liberated Zones Inside The Controlled Inner City by Dee Allen
Gnashing Teeth Publishing | 2025
ISBN: 979-8989834594
According to James Cagney, Allen’s collection “looks squarely at the people experiencing homelessness with grace, respect, and loving compassion.”
Are You Ready to Love Yourself A Black Man? by Kris Godspeed Amos
Unsolicited Press | 2019
ISBN: 978-1-950730-06-3
Amos’s collection allows “readers of literature/purveyors of society a direct view of our relationships with African-American men.”
(jopappy & the sentence-makers are) eponymous as funk by makalani bandele
Futurepoem | 2024
ISBN: 979-8-9889439-4-5
This collection is “a frenetic multimedia jam session of discursive lyric arranged and produced by poems written in bandele’s invented prose poetic form the unit.”
Peculiar Heritage by DeMisty D. Bellinger
Mason Jar Press | 2021
ISBN: 978-1-951853-06-8
This collection is “a resistance narrative to the present political climate and a regime in the US that rejects culture and inclusion.”
Trio House Press | 2016
ISBN: 9780996586436
Betts’s collection “captures the compromised living of Black lives, the lives of Black women, an unravelling relationship, reclaiming self, and spooling spiders.”
they/she/he: ritual to forget your unbecoming by dezireé a. brown
Host Publications | 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9905483-2-9
brown’s collection “maps the odyssey of a life lived in transition and serves as an archive of Black transmasc experience, of every burning crucible and every hard-won survival.”
Improvise in the Amen Corner by Larnell Custis Butler
Passager | 2007
ISBN: 978-0963138514
Improvise in the Amen Corner is a “collection of 48 portraits and poems that testify to African American lives of deep vexation and amazing grace.”
Get Funky, Get Swoll by Akhim Yuseff Cabéy
Black Lawrence Press | 2026
ISBN: 9781625571830
According to Marcus Jackson, Cabéy’s voice “exquisitely portrays the ways in which the soul survives and flourishes despite America’s multi-century addictions to racism, violence, and coerced performance.”
Antediluvian by Kameryn Alexa Carter
University of Pittsburgh Press | 2026
ISBN: 9780822967675
The speaker of this collection “calls on an intertextual constellation of artists as they attempt to wade through agoraphobia, parse out their relationship with God, and navigate falling in love.”
Every Hard Sweetness by Sheila Carter-Jones
Boa Editions | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-960145-12-3
Carter-Jones’s collection chronicles “the story of her family’s experience with an all-too-common practice in which Black men were wrongfully incarcerated in institutions for the criminally insane.”
Mason Jar Press | 2021
ISBN: 978-1-951853-07-5
According to David Olimpio, in this collection of stories and essays Coleman “discovers that it’s the act of writing itself that can free her from her family, her guilt, maybe even herself.”
On the Imperial Highway: New and Selected Poems by Jayne Cortez
Hanging Loose Press | 2009
ISBN: 978-1-931236-90-4
According to Maya Angelou, Cortez “has been and continues to be an explorer, probing the valleys and chasms of human existence.”
fifth wheel press | 2024
ISBN: 979-8-991523-62-2
This collection of poems and photographs “blends visual art and written word as part love letter, part critique of the goings-on in Charm City.”
Sinister Wisdom | 2025
ISBN: 978-1944981815
Edited by SaraEllen Strongman, this collection of Parker’s poems “introduces new audiences to Parker’s fire, passion, tenderness, and vision for the world.”
Yellow Arrow Publishing | 2026
ISBN: 978-1-967202-01-0
This chapbook reminds readers: “Black History is American History, and it should be ‘celebrated, appreciated, and narrated’ well beyond the annual 28-day observance.”
Autobiomythography Of by Ayokunle Falomo
Alice James Books | 2024
ISBN: 9781949944655
According to Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton, in this book Falomo “uses brave and inventive form, coupled with fables and mythology, to chart a journey of finding love and joy for oneself.”
Dysfunction: A Play On Words in the Familiar by Pauline Findlay
Pink Trees Press | 2022
ISBN: 978-1-513695-64-8
According to Katherine Rowland, Findlay’s poems “travel to the cosmos, to hells both historical and of our own design, and to the edges of promise.”
Song of Gray by Asha Futterman
Colorado Review | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-885635-95-2
According to Craig Morgan Teicher, in this poetry collection Futterman “arrives at a tense sort of wisdom—‘there is no changing what is happening/ what is not happening’—which is to say, everything is something else and also nothing else.”
Object 7 ( ,a spirit loosely, ,bundled in a frame, ) by Tilghman Alexander Goldsborough
Futurepoem | 2024
ISBN: 979-8-9889439-1-4
According to Marwa Helal, in these poems Goldsborough “is reporting live on the minuscule and maximal repercussions of the manmade.”
Ways to Move: Black Insurgent Grammars by Jonathan González
Ugly Duckling Presse | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-946604-38-5
In this hybrid work, González “theorizes Blackness as a grammar, occupying the interstices of white colonial culture; Black movement and expression are both defined by and break down the hegemonic.”
Exquisite by September by Shayla Hawkins
EastOver Press | 2023
ISBN: 978-1-958094-06-8
In these poems, Hawkins “chronicles the zeitgeist of the early 21st century United States and her place in it.”
the Colored page by Matthew E. Henry
Sundress Publications | 2022
ISBN: 9781951979348
This collection is “a visceral meditation on the multi-layered experience of a Black body in educational spaces.”
A Jazz Funeral for Uncle Tom by Harmony Holiday
Birds, LLC | 2019
ISBN: 978-0-991429-89-9
Holiday’s collection “looks at the current state of the double and triple consciousness blackness in the West demands and situates its varied states and registers as chorus, as music, and call and response.”
Unsung Canaan Ballads by Chyrel J. Jackson
Prolific Pulse Press | 2026
ISBN: 9781962374682
Jackson’s collection is “a love letter to Black people living in an imperfect and whitewashed world.”
Black Metamorphoses by Shanta Lee
Etruscan Press | 2023
ISBN: 978-1-7364946-6-0
Lee’s collection “pierces a 2,000+ year-old veil inspired by a range of Ovidian myths while resisting a direct conversion of the work.”
The Bushman’s Medicine Show by Gary Copeland Lilley
Lost Horse Press | 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9968584-9-6
Lilley’s collection is “a southern gothic testament delivered by an archetypical denizen of the modern south, a sort of Everyman from the Carolina low-country.”
Bird/Diz [an erased history of bebop] by Warren C. Longmire
Fonograf Editions | 2022
ISBN: 978-1-7378036-6-9
Longmire’s erasure chapbook “navigates the personal and artistic lives of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie through the author’s own roving imagination.”
American Graphic by JoAnne McFarland
Green Linden Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-961834-03-3
According to Tyehimba Jess, this collection “serves us a mesmerizing potion of personal history peppered with documentation of national cruelty and lifted with homage to Black ingenuity and resilience.”
Reconstructing Eden: A Southern Bastard’s Lyric Journey by Indigo Moor
CavanKerry Press | 2026
ISBN: 978-1-960327-18-5
Moor’s collection, told in what he terms a “Jazz Triptych,” is “a stunning rendering of a Black child moving through life with anger being an unknown phoenix rising in him.”
Regaining Unconsciousness by Harryette Mullen
Graywolf Press | August 5, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64445-349-0
In her first new collection in twelve years, Mullen “confronts the imminent dangers of our present to sound an alarm for our future, to wake us out of our complicity and despondency.”
Autumn House Press | 2026
ISBN: 978-1-63768-120-6
In this collection unfolding in three movements, “a queer woman caught in an abusive marriage begins to reimagine justice not as punishment but as something restorative, collective, and deeply non-carceral.”
The Grace of Black Mothers by Martheaus Perkins
Trio House Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-949487-42-8
The poems in this collection are “drenched in complexity and nuance: homemade heroes and villains, justice and fabrication, wit and risk, resurrection and erasure.”
All the Possible Bodies by Iain Haley Pollock
Alice James Books | 2025
ISBN: 9781949944907
According to Joseph Byrd, this collection “guarantees that our own bodies—every single one of them—hold mysteries and powers enough to face, and to overcome, the ruin and the wrack.”
threesome in the last toyota celica by m. mick powell
Host Publications | 2023
ISBN: 978-1-7376050-4-1
This chapbook “sings about Black queer femmehood in harmonies of multiple voices, asserting the self as ever-changing and voluminous.”
The Song of Everything: A Poet’s Exploration of South Carolina’s State Parks by Glenis Redmond
Good Printed Things | 2024
ISBN: 9781734584493
Redmond’s collection “explores the enduring connection between the natural world and our internal landscape.”
Good Printed Things | 2025
ISBN: 9781734584493
With her grandson Julian as a traveling companion, in this collection Redmond “gathers history, solace and stories of wide-open spaces, and the wisdom found beneath beckoning pines and along winding trails.”
The Seasoned Woman by Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson
Gnashing Teeth Publishing | 2025
ISBN: 978-1966075028
Sanderson’s collection is “a testament to time and the turn of the seasons in an unforgiving world where the sacredness of the human body is often forgotten.”
Etruscan Press | 2026
ISBN: 979-8990767843
Seibles’s collection celebrating his 70th year “strides, sprints, gavottes, and tiptoes through a life work of forging imagination into unforgettable tableaus.”
Fernwood Press | 2025
ISBN: 9781594981708
These poems “resemble an urban tapestry, touching on the cost of progress and the fading spirit of community in the early twenty-first century.”
Intimacies in Borrowed Light by Darius Stewart
EastOver Press | 2022
ISBN: 978-1-958094-01-3
According to Donika Kelly, Stewart’s collection “thrums with ecstasy and extravagance even as his speaker charts the vagaries of the body, the inevitability of grieving and loss.”
Lookout Books | 2025
ISBN: 9781940596587
In this collection, Wade “swaggers through time, through family, through love, through the perseverance of growing up in the deep South as a Black son with a white mom.”
Awaiting by Charisse Pearlina Weston
Ugly Duckling Presse | 2023
ISBN: 978-1-946433-98-5
“Part autobiography, part play, part fictive dream as long poem,” this collection blurs “the sightlines of narrative space by way of the spiral, by way of the fragment and the self-reflective slip of the fold into and out of itself.”
Contradictions from an Uncertain Silence by Emmett Wheatfall
Fernwood Press | 2018
ISBN: 978-1594981524
According to Annie Lighthart, Wheatfall’s book of poetry is “a collection for both the heart and the mind, a collection seasoned with the vital and invigorating salt of poetry and of wisdom.”
Spoke the Dark Matter by Michelle Whittaker
Sundress Publications | 2024
ISBN: 9781951979652
Whittaker’s collection is “an intimately carved, haunting window into the speaker’s Jamaican American heritage and her struggles with illness, healthcare, and romantic relationships.”
Detroit As Barn by Crystal Williams
Lost Horse Press | 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9911465-0-5
Williams’s collection “takes us beyond Simulacrum Detroit, the stage-set of crisis capitalism, to the human landscape of absolute potential and contingency.”
Monk Eats an Afro by Yolanda Wisher
Hanging Loose Press | 2014
ISBN: 978-1-934909-42-3
Wisher’s poetry collection “cracks open a blueswoman’s purse of poem and songs, bursting folk poetry for the millennium.”
Nonfiction & Multi-Genre Works
How to Be Unmothered by Camille U. Adams
Restless Books | 2025
ISBN: 9781632063953
Adams’s debut memoir “weaves the Caribbean island’s history of colonial violence with her own family’s legacy of abandonment.”
Beyond the Watershed by Nadia Alexis
CavanKerry Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-960327-09-3
This collection of poetry and photography “traces journeys to break free–documenting pain, making space for light, becoming a reckoning, connecting with spirit, and writing oneself into new seasons of safe waters, healthy love, and transformation.”
Bigger than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic
Lookout Books | 2022
ISBN: 9781940596471
“Born of a desire to bring together the voices of those most harshly affected by the intersecting pandemics of Covid-19 and systemic racism,” this anthology curated by Valerie Boyd features Pearl Cleage, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Tayari Jones, and more.
The 3rd Thing | 2023
ISBN: 9781737925859
This edition celebrating the one-hundredth anniversary of Jean Toomer’s 1923 novel features an oracular card deck as well as works by Christina Sharpe, Nikky Finney, Douglas Kearney, and more.
Black Lesbian in White America and Other Writings by Anita Cornwell
Sinister Wisdom | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-944981-89-1
This reprint of Cornwell’s 1983 essay collection includes previously unpublished poetry and an introduction by Briona Simone Jones as well as an interview between Cornwell and Audre Lorde.
Rolling: A Ladies’ Guide to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu by Melanie Farmer
Burrow Press | 2023
ISBN: 978-1-941681-24-4
According to Colson Whitehead, this “hilarious and poignant” essay is “a wise and wry take on identity formation, parental expectations, and proper martial arts attire.”
The Five Blessings of Ifá by Gabrielle Felder
North Atlantic Books | 2025
ISBN: 9798889841043
Felder’s book “explores how Black communities across the diaspora draw strength from ancestral wisdom, family, community care, and mutual aid, using the principles of Ifá—a West African spiritual tradition—as a guiding framework.”
August Wilson’s American Century: Life as Art by Laurence A. Glasco
University of Pittsburgh Press | 2026
ISBN: 9780822948544
According to Publishers Weekly, Glasco “paints a richly detailed portrait of how the playwright’s relationship to his home—as both native son and outsider—shaped the settings and thematic preoccupations of his plays.”
Human Achievements by Lauren Hunter
Birds, LLC | 2017
ISBN: 978-0-991429-85-1
According to Laurie Sheck, Hunter’s “multi-vocal and achingly audacious mixture of poetry and prose effectively engages issues of imagination and documentation, memory and displacement, and the crucial, complex ways in which memory itself is like fire.”
Fodder by Douglas Kearney and Val Jeanty
Fonograf Editions | 2021
This LP featuring Kearney’s poetry and Jeanty’s music interweaves “new and old texts of original composition, samples, and improvisation to create live sound chemistry, raw energy, and better listening through playing.”
I Know What the Red Clay Looks Like: The Voice and Vision of Black Women Writers by Rebecca Carroll
Haymarket Books | 2024
ISBN: 979-8-888902-54-7
In this new edition of the 1994 book, Carroll presents its original conversations “alongside personalized introductions by some of the brightest voices in today’s literary world, including Donika Kelly, Safiya Sinclair, Diamond Sharp, and Chanda Prescod-Weinstein.”
Joy is the Justice We Give Ourselves by J. Drew Lanham
Hub City Press | 2024
ISBN: 979-8-88574-030-2
In this collection of poetry and prose, Lanham “notices nature through seasonal shifts, societal unrest, and deeply personal reflection and traces a path from bitter history to the present predicament.”
Mamas, Martyrs, and Jezebels: Myths, Legends, and Other Lies You’ve Been Told about Black Women
Black Lawrence Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-625570-91-8
Edited by Jan Boulware, Rondrea Mathis, Clarissa West-White, and Kideste Mariam Yusef, this anthology “revisits notions of Black womanhood to include the ways in which Black women’s perceived strength can function as a dangerous denial of Black women’s humanity.”
And It Begins Like This by LaTanya McQueen
Black Lawrence Press | 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62557-703-0
According to Wendy S. Walters, McQueen’s essay collection “suggests loneliness is also the accomplishment of understanding how far away you can move from other people’s expectations.”
Living of Natural Causes by Kadzi Mutizwa
Unsolicited Press | 2022
ISBN: 978-1-956692-08-2
In these twelve “humor-laced” personal essays, Mutizwa “reflects on her trajectory as a high(ish)-functioning outlier.”
Come By Here: A Memoir in Essays from Georgia’s Geechee Coast by Neesha Powell-Ingabire
Hub City Press | 2024
ISBN: 979-8-885740-38-8
In her debut memoir, Powell-Ingabire “chips away at coastal Georgia’s facade of beaches and golden marshes to recover undertold Black history alongside personal and family stories.”
The High Alive: An Epic Hoodoo Diptych by Carlos Sirah
The 3rd Thing | 2020
ISBN: 978-1-7344071-2-9
In Sirah’s work, “page is transformed into space for a performative prose in this mythopoesis of blackness and queerness, of return and foray.”
The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde by Rima Vesely-Flad
North Atlantic Books | 2026
ISBN: 9798889842583
Vesely-Flad’s book explores “how two of America’s greatest literary voices reflect—and expand—Buddhism’s most timeless truths toward justice and liberation.”
Literary Magazines
“Islands in the Sky” by Ashia S. Ajani
Adi Magazine | 2025
This essay begins, “Everywhere I go, spiders seem to find me. If not spiders then their webs, clingy strings meant to capture prey or capture your attention.”
“Gig Economy” by Derrick Austin
New England Review | 2025
This poem begins, “Cutting my own hair saves money / better put toward a bill. I look presentable enough / in virtual meetings, a genial blur.”
“The Smell of Her” by Dana Baylous
Wellspringwords | 2025
This essay begins, “She says good morning and I hear I miss you. She says I’m busy and I hear I’m practicing how not to say your name.”
Shō Poetry Journal | 2026
This playlist features poems by Black poets published in Shō Poetry Journal, including Cortney Lamar Charleston, Christian J. Collier, Saddiq Dzukogi, Chiagoziem Jideofor, william o’neal ii, and February Spikener.
“In the Mourning” by DeeSoul Carson
Half Mystic Journal | 2022
This poem begins, “Today it is cancer. Yesterday it is a bullet. / Tomorrow you will read this poem / and think of a new name, someone familiar, / like a cousin you haven’t heard from in a while.”
The Hudson Review | 2025
This story begins, “First came the drama, meeting the man who would become the baby’s father. On her way back to the dorm room from seeing the movie Body Snatchers…”
Epiphany | 2025
This poem begins, “I put on my suit every day for work. / It takes three hours. / cannot live inside it for more than fifteen / or twenty minutes or I die. So, I don’t.”
beestung | 2025
This poem begins, “Love, our bigness is a gift. We are massively magnificent as we are. / Told to exercise our bodies as if demons & I am so tired of running / to lose myself.”
Two Poems by Dontay M. Givens II
ANMLY | 2024
The poem “Fire In My Bones Bloos” begins, “Dere ain’t much lef’ on dis side of heaven— / mah woman den become a star, a ball of gas, / dey say, or a slab of hot-water cornbread / tossed up 2 tha sky.”
Tahoma Literary Review | 2025
This essay begins, “In his hospital bed my father opens his mouth and readies himself to die.”
“Within these veils” by Brandon Greene
Tadpole Press Literary Magazine | 2023
This poem begins, “Within these veils of ebony hue, / A heart, a laugh, a dance or two, / A twist of truth and satire’s kiss, / To heal the hurt of life’s abyss.”
“Just Like Us” by Vernita Hall
Terrain.org | 2025
This poem begins, “It’s a fantasy land the J6ers are shilling / It’s a magical place / Elvis is back in the building…”
Two Poems and One Photograph by S*an D. Henry-Smith
beestung | 2019
The poem “earworm” begins, “The speaker of this poem is in a tizzy in a huffy & a 1/2, she’s feeling / down on her luck. how disparate, how desperate. I love her…”
“Flower People” by John Holman
The Sun | 2024
This story begins, “Eugene’s dad got him the job. Eugene didn’t ask how. Explanations were seldom satisfactory anyway.”
“The Bridge Between” by Sabreen Jolley-Brown
Wellspringwords | 2025
This essay begins, “The bridge between who you are and who you must become to survive is never straight. It twists through memory, scent, and silence.”
Strange Hymnal | 2025
The poem “Black butch blues #533” begins, “In a niche / backwater, I / float, querying / to myself…”
“One day, Earth” by Tamupuwa Kamba
Tadpole Press Literary Magazine | 2025
This poem begins, “One day, Earth will let us go. / Wildflowers will bloom from our bones—not to mourn, but / to adorn our bodies for Her quiet renewal.”
“The Crone at Her Sink” by Donika Kelly
New England Review | 2025
This poem begins, “Of course, the sink is never empty, / or rather: empties, briefly, then is full / again: the one plate; the one mug…”
“Shiva” by Kyla Kupferstein Torres
Lilith | 2023
This work begins, “Get clear right away: he is going to die. There isn’t going to be any ‘beating this’ or ‘surviving the odds.’”
“Mountains, Mustard Seeds, and Marigolds” by Jasmin Lankford
West Trestle Review | 2025
This work begins, “When a woman has a miscarriage, / it’s tradition for other women to offer her / forget-me-not flower seeds / in memory of the child. My friends give me…”
“Footprints In Alabama” by Jamila Minnicks
The Sun | 2023
This essay begins, “The soundtrack of lapping waves must be the same here. Does the rhythm of water caressing a shoreline ever change?”
“To the Doctor Who Left” by Noella Moshi
Off Assignment | 2025
This essay begins, “I prepared for our first meeting the same way I would for a job interview. I had researched my husband’s illness and gotten recommended interventions on the internet.”
“Eleven Lebens” by Marilyn Nelson
The Hudson Review | 2025
This poem begins, “1. So Busy / I wonder what my left brain has been up to / During all these years of virtual silence…”
ANMLY | 2021
The poem “The Chessmen” begins, “Chessmen / Quiet / After / Revising / Illusions— / Their / Innumerable / Identities / Are / Sacrifices…”
Tahoma Literary Review | 2025
This essay begins, “Some of my kids’ friends came over and stayed until dark the other night, which, in winter on the Olympic Peninsula, is still quite early.”
“Behind the Wall” by Nadu Ologoudou
Fahmidan Journal | 2025
This story begins, “They all knew what was happening. Despite its name, the compound known as La Muette was not a silent place.”
“Great Families” by Robert Osborne
Oyster River Pages | 2025
This story begins, “‘There is so much weight to these things,’ Molly told me after the funeral of her mother. ‘It’s oppressive.’”
“looking for a soft place to land” by J. C. Otiono
ALOCASIA | 2023
This poem begins, “Love when met has little opportunity to become grief, / and I took to burying my grief beneath the soil. / I followed you: / succumbed to the hushed grove.”
The Recurring Dream of the Water Mothers
Adi Magazine | 2023
This ten-part series featuring poetry by Airea Dee Matthews and photography by Laylah Amatullah Barrayn “weaves mythic portraiture and epic poetry to visit with the water spirits of the African diaspora and transmit their healing properties.”
Panacea Review | 2025
This story begins, “The children were playing in the park on a July Tuesday at two in the afternoon when Mary-Beth Chanel (née Turner) arrived with two very tall white men with cameras for heads…”
“With Passion and Purpose: Black Collectors Complicate Western Art Culture” by Shantay Robinson
The Hopkins Review | 2025
This essay begins, “In April of this year, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC announced that it received a substantial gift of more than one hundred seventy artworks by Black American artists from art collectors Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson.”
The Hopkins Review | 2025
The poem “Maybe It’s You Blues Villanelle” begins, “It’s not the deep dark: it’s the dimwits I fear / And looks like the news is just playin along / This doesn’t seem like the last fifty years…”
“Dark & Lovely” by Sabrina Spence
West Trestle Review | 2025
This poem begins, “I grew up with my head in the kitchen sink, / shoulders wet with the powdered perfume of Johnson & Johnson baby shampoo.”
Epiphany | 2024
The poem “Boomerang” begins, “Down from the chapels and / from the porticos draped in / star-spangled curtains hung like / sheared flesh, hung like gathered / joints…”
“Violent Offender: Chapter One” by Kashawn Taylor
Oyster River Pages | 2024
This essay begins, “‘Whoa, whoa, breathe. Sit down.’ The voice came from what I believed was behind me. I wasn’t entirely sure; my consciousness flickered.”
“The Love Cuff” by Mary Tonita Austin
The Keepthings | 2025
This essay begins, “In the summer of 1993, about a week after my grandmother Marybelle’s funeral, my grandfather asked me to take him to the hospital.”
“History Lesson” by Alexandria Valentine
Arkana | 2024
This poem begins, “i was doing the preamble to the constitution during that time you had to / remember the preamble to the constitution before you could graduate…”
“What do we tell the water now?” by Lisbeth White
Terrain.org | 2025
This poem begins, “Jacob got shot in the thigh by a rubber bullet outside the immigration detention center, / I say to the water.”
“Half Moon Grill” by Marcella White Campbell
Lilith | 2023
This work begins, “Plates of uneaten food from the dorm kitchen are piling up around me in my room. My boyfriend, who lives down the hall, keeps bringing me new plates on his way to class.”
Four Poems by Allison Whittenberg
Philly Poetry Chapbook Review | 2025
The poem “Eaten” begins, “Hollywood Babylon brewed the myth / That’s digested without tasting truth / Malnourished due to how she drank…”
“Bicycle freedoms” by Odelia Younge
OtherwiseMag | 2025
This poem begins, “I never learned to ride a bicycle / when I was young. / I used to watch neighbourhood kids / fly by and envy their ‘flurry of feet freedom.’”
“POLLEN SONG” by earth justice zadok
ALOCASIA | 2025
This poem begins, “like a tree / breathing / seedlings / on the windowsill, / June / rides the wind, / loving / tender, slow / & frictionless…”
