The recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award, she has received grants and fellowships from the Jerome, Cave Canem, and Watson foundations, as well as Civitella Ranieri and the NEA. The recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award for Poetry, Girmay's newest collection elegizes and celebrates life, while wrestling with the humanistic notion of seeing beyond: seeing violence, seeing grace, and seeing each other better.Īracelis Girmay is the author of three poetry collections, the black maria Kingdom Animalia, which won the Isabella Gardner Award and was a finalist for the NBCC Award and Teeth. Central to this project is a desire to recognize the lives of Eritrean refugees who have been made invisible by years of immigration crisis, refugee status, exile, and resulting statelessness. Taking its name from the moon's dark plains, misidentified as seas by early astronomers, the black maria investigates African diasporic histories, the consequences of racism within American culture, and the question of human identity.

Originally from Santa Ana, California, she splits her time between New York and Amherst, Massachusetts.Girmay's] every loss-she calls them estrangements-is a yearning for connection across time and place her every fragment is a bulwark against ruin.

She currently teaches at Hampshire College's School for Interdisciplinary Arts and in Drew University's low residency MFA program. The recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award for Poetry, Girmay's newest collection elegizes and celebrates life, while wrestling with the humanistic notion of seeing beyond: seeing violence, seeing grace, and seeing each other better.Īracelis Girmay is the author of two poetry collections, Teeth and Kingdom Animalia, which won the Isabella Gardner Award and was a finalist for the NBCC Award.

Taking its name from the moon's dark plains, misidentified as seas by early astronomers, The Black Maria investigates African diasporic histories, the consequences of racism within American culture, and the question of human identity.

The Black Maria by Aracelis Girmay