Jorrell Watkins

Jorrell Watkins grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and attended Hampshire College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He is the author of the full-length collection Play|House, which was shortlisted for the 2020 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. His chapbook, If Only the Sharks Would Bite, won the inaugural Desert Pavilion Chapbook Series in Poetry. He is the coauthor of  Studies in Brotherly Love (Prompt Press, 2021), a poetry chapbook based on Malcolm Corley’s paintings, with Claretta Holsey, DJ Savarese, and Lateef Mcleod. In 2019, Combined Efforts Theater Company produced Watkins' disability inclusive play, Meet us at the Horizon.

Watkins was a 2020-21 Fulbright Japan Graduate Research Fellow, and in 2022 was a poet contributor to the Poetry & Practice series. He lives in Kansai, Japan, where he studies Enka, poetry, and Aikido.