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Current Feminist in Residence Fellow

Kemi Alabi

This is a painted portrait by Toya Beacham of Kemi Alabi, a young dark skinned person with glasses. They are pictured in a orange shirt with a grey button up over it. the sun is reflecting off of their glasses and shining brightly in the background. There are puffy white clouds dispersed amongst the background of a blue sky. Kemi Alabi is the author of Against Heaven (Graywolf Press, 2022), selected by Claudia Rankine as winner of the Academy of American Poets First Book Award. The collection was a Kate Tufts Discovery Award finalist, Chicago Review of Books Award winner, and one of New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2022, among other honors. Alabi’s poems appear widely in journals and anthologies, including The Atlantic, The Nation, Poetry, Boston Review, and Best New Poets. They’ve been awarded fellowships from MacDowell, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Germany’s Akademie der Künste, Italy’s Civitella Ranieri, and elsewhere. Alabi has over ten years of experience building narrative power with organizers and is co-editor of The Echoing Ida Collection (Feminist Press, 2021), an anthology of reproductive justice writing. Born in Wisconsin on a Sunday in July, they now live in Chicago, IL.

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