Nzadi Keita

Nzadi Keita (she/her) is the author of the poetry collections Migration Letters: Poems (Beacon Press, 2024), which centers on her upbringing in Black working-class Philadelphia; Brief Evidence of Heaven: Poems from the Life of Anna Murray Douglass (Whirlwind Press, 2014), which uses persona to shed light on freeborn, illiterate abolitionist Anna Murray Douglass, Frederick Douglass’s first wife; and Birthmarks (Nightshade Press, 1993), which springs from recorded oral histories that Keita conducted. Keita’s work is included in the anthologies A Face to Meet the Faces: A Persona Poetry Anthology (University of Akron Press, 2012), The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (University of Georgia Press, 2007), and Beyond the Frontier: African-American Poetry for the 21st Century (Black Classic Press, 2002). Her poems have also been published in Poet Lore, Crab Orchard Review, MELUS, among other journals.

Keita is a Cave Canem alumna. She was an adviser for the award-winning film BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez, and a consultant with Mural Arts Philadelphia. From 1997 to 2022, she was a professor of English at Ursinus College, where she taught creative writing and African American literature, and nurtured the growth of the African-American/Africana Studies Program. Keita has received a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant, the Transformation Award from the Leeway Foundation, a Fine Arts Work Center Walker Fellowship from Cave Canem, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts for Poetry.