Blackberry Winter

Photo by Richard Burlton on Unsplash

Kwoya Fagin Maples is a writer from Charleston, S.C. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama and has received fellowships from Cave Canem and the Alabama State Council on the Arts.  She is the author of Mend (University Press of Kentucky, 2018) which was named a 2019 Finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry and a 2019 Finalist for the Housatonic Book Award for Poetry. In addition to a chapbook entitled Something of Yours (Finishing Line Press 2010) her work is published in several journals and anthologies including Blackbird Literary Journal, Obsidian, Berkeley Poetry Review, The African-American Review, Pluck!, Tin House Review Online and Cave Canem Anthology XIII. Prior to publication, Mend received a grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation and was finalist for AWP’s Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. Mend tells the story of the birth of obstetrics and gynecology in America and the role enslaved black women played in that process. Maples teaches in the MFA program for Creative Writing at the University of Alabama, home of the Black Warrior Review.

(c) 2020 Kwoya Fagin Maples