Congratulations to Justin Phillip Reed,
2019-2021 Fellow in Creative Writing at the
Center for African American Poetry and Poetics
Justin Phillip Reed is an American poet living in St. Louis. He is the author of Indecency (Coffee House Press), winner of the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry and a finalist for the 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, as well as the chapbook A History of Flamboyance (YesYes Books, 2016). His work appears in African American Review, Best American Essays, Callaloo, The Kenyon Review, Obsidian, and elsewhere. A three-time high school expellee and an ex-college dropout, he received his BA in creative writing at Tusculum College and his MFA in poetry at Washington University in St. Louis, where he served as Junior Writer-in-Residence. He has received fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, the Conversation Literary Festival, and the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis. Reed was born and raised in South Carolina.
Runner Up: Keith Wilson
Finalists (in alphabetical order):
Joshua Burton
Valencia Robin Grice
Shayla Lawz
Madison McCartha
Xandria Phillips
Congratulations to Rickey Laurentiis,
Inaugural Fellow in Creative Writing at the
Center for African American Poetry and Poetics
Rickey Laurentiis was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, to love the dark. The author of Boy with Thorn (University of Pittsburgh, 2015), winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Levis Reading Prize, and a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, Laurentiis' other honors include fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Poetry Foundation, Lannan Literary Foundation and, most recently, the Whiting Foundation. Their poem, "Visible City," opened Notes for Now, the exhibition catalogue for the art international Prospect.3 New Orleans, and was later anthologized in Bettering American Poetry, A Tale of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation. Laurentiis now lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as the inaugural Fellow in Creative Writing at the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics at the University of Pittsburgh.
During his two-year fellowship, Mr. Laurentiis’s primary focus will be on his own poetry and creative work. He will also teach community workshops, lead sessions of the course Studio in African American Poetry and Poetics, participate in the interactive public forum Co-Lab, and give one public reading with a Q&A.