#ObsidianVoices

A. H. Jerriod Avant is the author of Muscadine (Four Way Books, September 2023). Born and raised in Longtown, Mississippi, Jerriod is a graduate of Jackson State University and has earned MFA degrees from Spalding University and New York University. He’s received residencies from the Vermont Studio Center and The James Castle House. A recipient of the Amiri Baraka scholarship from Naropa Summer Writing Program and the John Ciardi scholarship from The Bread Loaf Writer’s conference, Jerriod has received two winter fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and an emerging artist grant from the St. Botolph Club Foundation. His poems appear in Mississippi Review, Callaloo, Boston Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Baffler, the Yale Review, and other journals.

Ubaldimir Guerra is a poet, spoken word artist and lecturer from Belize City. He teaches English and literature at the University of Belize. His poetry appears in the anthology Bookmarked: PREE New Caribbean Writing, PREE: Caribbean Writing, BIM: Arts for the 21st Century, Interviewing the Caribbean, and the Apalachee Review. Ubaldimir was shortlisted for the Bocas Emerging Writers fellowship in 2022 and is a winner of the Poetry Archive Now Wordview 2022.

Jaylnn Harris is a writer, educator, and book designer from Baltimore. Her work can be found in Poets.org, the Hopkins Review, Feminist Studies, Best American Poetry 2022, and elsewhere.

Onome grew up with her ear in multiple worlds: the Nigerian lilt of her immigrant parents, and the African American vernacular of her classmates. She’s performed in theater festivals, recited sound poetry at hundreds of venues, recorded soundscapes for podcasts, and created vocal film scores. Onome is a partner artist at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, where she contributes her performances and trainings across their vast educational programming spectrum.

Duriel E. Harris is a poet, performer, and sound artist. She is author of three print volumes of poetry, including No Dictionary of a Living Tongue (Nightboat, 2017), Drag (2003) and Amnesiac: Poems (2010). Multi-genre works include her one-woman theatrical performance Thingification, as well as Speleology (2011), a video collaboration with artist Scott Rankin. Cofounder of the avant garde poetry/performance trio The Black Took Collective, Harris is showcased in the Poetry Foundation and Manual Cinema’s short film Multitudes celebrating the Walt Whitman BiCentennial. Recent writing is featured with Harriet Blog (The Poetry Foundation), the Academy of American Poets, and Letters to the Future: Black WOMEN/Radical WRITING (Kore Press 2018). Appearances include performances at the Lake Forest College Allan L. Carr Theatre, the Chicago Jazz Festival (with Douglas Ewart & Inventions), the Greenhouse Theater (Chicago), the Naropa Capitalocene, The Votive Poetics Workshop (New Zealand), and Festival Internacional de Poesía de La Habana (Cuba). Awarded the George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature at the 2023 AWP conference, Harris is Professor of English at Illinois State University and Editor of Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora.

Tracie Morris’s poetry collections include handholding: 5 kinds (2016), Rhyme Scheme (2012), and Intermission (1998). Her work is featured in numerous anthologies, including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind (2015), The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop (2015), and An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art (2002). With Charles Bernstein, she coedited Best American Experimental Writing (2016). Her sound installations have been presented at the Whitney Biennial, MoMA, the Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning, and other sites. She has received numerous honors, including grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Creative Capital, and the Asian Cultural Council and residencies at Yaddo and the Millay and MacDowell colonies. In 2021, Morris was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for poetry. She has taught at institutions such as the University of Pennsylvania, Pratt Institute, and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.