Parneshia Jones

Parneshia Jones studied creative writing at Chicago State University and earned an MFA from Spalding University. Her first book Vessel (2015) was the winner of the Midwest Book Award and featured in O, The Oprah Magazine as one of 12 poetry books to savor for National Poetry Month. Her poems have been published in anthologies such as The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (2007), Poetry Speaks Who I Am (2010), and She Walks in Beauty: A Woman’s Journey Through Poems (2011), edited by Caroline Kennedy. Jones’s poems have been featured on Chicago Public Radio, and she is a member of Affrilachian Poets, a collective of black poets from Appalachia.

The recipient of a Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award, a fellowship from the Lannan Foundation, a Margaret Walker Short Story Award, and an Aquarius Press Legacy Award, Jones has received commissions from such organizations as Art for Humanity in South Africa and Shorefront Legacy in Chicago and performed her work internationally. She serves on the boards of Cave Canem and the Guild Complex and the advisory board for UniVerse: A United Nations of Poetry. She is the editorial director for trade and engagement at Northwestern University Press.