BLACK SUNFLOWERS
POETRY PRESS

Rabha is Egyptian, from Abu Dhabi, and based in Chicago. She has a Bachelor of Arts from New York University Abu Dhabi graduate, and completed an MFA in Writing at School of the Arts Institute of Chicago. She is the winner of the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, 2020 and has published her work in Oyes Review, Collected 2018, Airport Road, Electra Street and Strange Horizons. She helms Scond Draft Press

From Tucson Arizona, Effiwatt holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Provost fellow. She is currently the recipient of a Pflughaupt Fellowship in Poetry. Her work has apeared in Prompt Press and The Iowa Review.

Poet Yuu Ikeda (she/they) based in Japan loves reading, writing, art and sugary coffee. Ikeda writes poetry every day and her latest poetry collection ‘A Knife She Holds’ was published in 2022 by Newcomer Press.

Deshawn McKinney is an American writer and performer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His art, grounded in hip-hop, is used as a means of exploring liberation and the delicate balance of existence. Deshawn has performed for and built with audiences around the world and has met with students in Kingston, Jamaica to share art and speak to collective freedom, and headlined Toast Poetry in Norwich. He holds an MSc in Social Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and an MA in Poetry from the University of East Anglia.

With roots in Punjab and the American Midwest, Mitali Khanna Sharma is a poet and scholar working between culture, (agro)ecology, and the body. She holds a B.A. in English Literature from Columbia University and is currently a graduate student studying food, land and biocultural diversity at the University of Michigan. Her poems have appeared in various journals and anthologies, including MAYDAY Magazine, Peach Magazine, and Wordgathering: A Journal for Disability Poetry and Literature. She is a founding editor of Şerābi - zine-anthology on religion, culture, and nationalism in South/west Asia and diaspora.

Aileen Bassis is a widely exhibited visual artist and poet in New York City with a practice in book arts, printmaking, photography and illustration. Her artist books are in public collections including libraries at Yale, Swarthmore and Wellesley Colleges in the US. She has twice been awarded artist residencies in poetry at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida. Her writing has appeared in Body Literature, spillway, Grey Sparrow Journal, Canary, the Pinch and The Southampton Review. Her chapbook The Other Side of the Mirror was published in 2023 by Dark Onus Press.

A physician, writer, poet and MFA candidate (Poetry) at Pacific University, Joanne Godley is also Meter Keeper in the Poetry Witch Community and Anaphora Arts Fellow in both poetry and fiction. Her writing has been published in the Bellevue Literary Review, Massachusetts Review, Mantis, Light, FIYAH, Pratik, Account and Juked among others. Twice nominated for a Pushcart prize, Godley has been supported by Anaphora Arts VONA, Kenyon Writer’s Workshop, Bread Loaf Writers Conference and Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing. Her chapbook, Picking Scabs from the Body History was published in 2020. Godley lives in Mexico City.

Inna Krasnoper is a poet, artist, and literary translator, born in Ufa, and resident in Berlin since 2011. She studied at the Chto Delat collective School of Engaged Art and received a BA in Dance, Context, Choreography from UdK Berlin. Her first book of Russophone poetry (Нитки торчат, Loose Threads) was published in 2021 by Voznesensky Center. Her work has been published in English and multilingually in SAND, Ghost Proposal, Pocket Samovar, Oversound, 128 LIT, Alchemy, Slanted House Zine, Dvoetochie, Wild Roof, and stadtsprachen magazin. Her chapbook Over Sight was published by Eulalia Books in Jan, 2024

From Columbia South Carolina, Olszewski was named a Top 15 Foyle Young Poet of the Year by the UK Poetry Society with her winning poem ‘At The Funeral’. Her text ‘Gap’ won a national gold medal from Scholastic Art & Writing Awards in 2019 and her work has appeared in Jasper magazine. She is currently studying English at Smith College.

Leo Smith is a queer transmasculine poet from Inglewood, CA and Smith College graduate. They have served as associate editor at Exposition Review, worked for The Massachusetts Review and were a 2023 Roots Wounds Words Poetry Fellow. Poems “Drive Home” and “Haibun of This Heart’s Insides” (from this set) were awarded the Rosemary Thomas Poetry Prize at Smith College. Smith’s work also appears in Arcanum Magazine and ANMLY.

Morgan Christie has won a host of literary awards including the 2017 Alexander Posey Chapbook Prize, the 2018 Likely Red Fiction Chapbook award and the 2022 Digging Press chapbook prize for 'People Without Wings'. Her first full length short story collection was published by Tolsun Books in 2020. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and she has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Look out for another work from Morgan currently in development here at Black Sunflowers Poetry Press!

Sarah is a poet, as well as writer of fiction, nonfiction, audiowalks and maker of artistbooks. Her second poetry collection, melt (Waterloo Press, 2020), draws on these various forms to create an unsettling intimacy with the vastness of ocean. Her site specific pieces have been told through geocaching, augmented reality, micro print, performance and audio across England and Scotland. Her work has been shortlisted for the 2014 New Media Writing Prize, the 2017 Ivan Juritz Prize for Creative Experiment, the 2019 Hinterland Competition and the 2019 Forward Prize for Poetry.

Sienna grew up in Shanghai. She holds a B.A. in Literature from Duke University. The manuscript of her first novel was shortlisted for the Dzanc Prize for Fiction and longlisted for the Petrichor Prize. She lives, writes, and practices law in London.

Jean Prokott’s poetry collection Almost Sunset at High Noon won the Howling Bird Press Book Prize and was published in Nov 2021. She is a recipient of the AWP Intro Journals Award, the Minnesota League of Poets Grand Prize, and two National Endowment for the Humanities scholarships. She has work published in Arts & Letters, Rattle, and Great Lakes Review, among other journals. She is a graduate of Minnesota State University Mankato's MFA program, holds a Master of Science in Education from Winona State, and lives in Rochester, MN.

JW Summerisle, a former Foyles Young Poet of the Year from Leicester, has published art and poetry online and in print. Their work has appeared in SAND, Lily Poetry Review, New Walk Museum & Gallery and the Haunted Antiques Paranormal Research Centre.