Kazim Ali (’98) was born in the United Kingdom and has lived transnationally in the United States, Canada, India, France, and the Middle East. His books encompass multiple genres, including several volumes of poetry, novels, and translations. He is currently a Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. His newest books are a volume of three long poems entitled The Voice of Sheila Chandra and a memoir of his Canadian childhood, Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water. https://www.kazimali.com/
2023 Staff Poets
Victoria Chang’s forthcoming book of poems, With My Back to the World will be published in 2024 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Her latest book of poetry is The Trees Witness Everything (Copper Canyon Press, 2022). Her nonfiction book, Dear Memory (Milkweed Editions), was published in 2021. OBIT (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), her prior book of poems was named a New York Times Notable Book, a Time Must-Read Book, and received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry, and the PEN/Voelcker Award. It was also longlisted for a National Book Award and named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Griffin International Poetry Prize. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and lives in Los Angeles and is the Acting Program Chair and faculty member within Antioch’s low-residency MFA Program. She is also the Poetry Editor for the New York Times Magazine.
Photo credit: Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times
Forrest Gander, a writer and translator with degrees in geology and literature, was born in the Mojave Desert and lives in northern California. His books, often concerned with ecology, include Twice Alive, Be With, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and the collaboration, Knot, with photographer Jack Shear. Gander’s translations include It Must Be a Misunderstanding by Coral Bracho, Spectacle & Pigsty by Kiwao Nomura (Best Translated Book Award), and Names and Rivers: Poems by Shuri Kido. He has received grants from the Library of Congress, the Guggenheim, Howard, Whiting and United States Artists Foundations.
Photo Credit: Ashwini Bhat
Carmen Giménez is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Milk and Filth, a finalist for the NBCC Award in Poetry and Be Recorder (Graywolf Press, 2019), which was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award in Poetry, the PEN Open Book Award, the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She was awarded the Academy of American Poets Fellowship Prize in 2020. A 2019 Guggenheim fellow, she served as the publisher of Noemi Press for twenty years. She now serves as publisher and director for Graywolf Press.
Photo Credit: Jason Gardner
Brenda Hillman’s most recent books are In a Few Minutes Before Later (Wesleyan University Press, 2022) and Extra Hidden Life among the Days (Wesleyan University Press, 2018). Hillman has co-edited and co-translated numerous volumes, including Ana Cristina Cesar’s At Your Feet (Parlor Press, 2018), co-translated from Portuguese with her mother Helen Hillman. Her awards for poetry include the 2020 Morton Dauwen Zabel Award for Innovation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She teaches at Saint Mary’s College of California, co-directs Poetry Week at Community of Writers and currently serves as a Chancellor at the Academy of American Poets.
Photo credit: University of Arizona Poetry Center
Poet & scholar Evie Shockley thinks, creates, and writes with her eye on a Black feminist horizon. Her books of poetry include suddenly we (forthcoming 2023), semiautomatic, and the new black. Her work has twice garnered the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and appears internationally. Her honors include the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry and the Stephen Henderson Award, and her joys include participating in such communities as Poets at the End of the World, Cave Canem, & the Community of Writers. Shockley is the Zora Neale Hurston Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University.
