#ObsidianVoices

Ariana Benson was born in Norfolk, Virginia. Her debut collection, Black Pastoral, won the 2022 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Benson has received the Furious Flower Poetry Prize, the Porter House Review Poetry Prize, and the 2021 Graybeal-Gowen Prize for Virginia Poets. She is the winner of a 2023 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, the Yale Review, POETRY Magazine, Copper Nickel, and elsewhere. Through her writing, she strives to fashion vignettes of Blackness that speak to its infinite depth and richness.

Benin Lemus is a poet and an educator based in South Los Angeles. Her debut poetry collection, Dreaming in Mourning (2022), is published by World Stage Press. Her work is published online and in print, most recently in Márọkọ́: Journal of African Poetry and Torch Literary Arts. She has performed at Pasadena LitFest, Center Theatre Group and The World Stage Performance Gallery in historic Leimert Park.

Moderator

L. Renée is a poet and nonfiction writer. Her work has been nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and a Pushcart Prize. She is the recipient of the international 2022 Rattle Poetry Prize, Indiana University Guy Lemmon Award in Public Writing, Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Alumni Award, Appalachian Review’s Denny C. Plattner Award, 2021 Rattle Poetry Prize finalist, and second place for PLUCK! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture and New Limestone Review’s Crystal Wilkinson Creative Writing Prize. She is Assistant Director of Furious Flower Poetry Center and Assistant Professor of English at James Madison University.