Poets at the End of the World
Poets at the End of the World, a collective of poets comprised of Ama Codjoe, Donika Kelly, Nicole Sealey, Evie Shockley & Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, is dedicated to service & social justice. Inspired by the words & lives of Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Gwendolyn Brooks, & Lucille Clifton — in whose “shapeshifter poems” these poets found their shared name — the collective transforms its literary work into action.
By donating the collective honoraria back to the community, Poets at the End of the World aims to provide tangible support to institutions & causes that contribute to making the world more safe, just, & equitable for all.
Poets at the End of the World, a collective of poets comprised of Ama Codjoe, Donika Kelly, Nicole Sealey, Evie Shockley & Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, is dedicated to service & social justice. Inspired by the words & lives of Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Gwendolyn Brooks, & Lucille Clifton — in whose “shapeshifter poems” these poets found their shared name — the collective transforms its literary work into action.
By donating the collective honoraria back to the community, Poets at the End of the World aims to provide tangible support to institutions & causes that contribute to making the world more safe, just, & equitable for all.
Purpose:
- To use poetry to positively impact others
- To cultivate sisterhood & nurture black women
- To encourage vision within the collective & in others
- To make art that matters, heals, & continues our literary tradition(s)
- To identify needs & work to help fill them
Collective offerings:
Poets at the End of the World is available for poetry readings, workshops, panels, & more! Three to five members of the collective will be present at all events.
As stated in its mission, all honoraria will be donated to institutions and causes agreed upon by the collective.
Poets at the End of the World is available for poetry readings, workshops, panels, & more! Three to five members of the collective will be present at all events.
As stated in its mission, all honoraria will be donated to institutions and causes agreed upon by the collective.
Poet Bios:
 photo: Jamie Harmon
Ama Codjoe was raised in Youngstown, Ohio with roots in Memphis and Accra. She is the author of Blood of the Air, winner of the eighth annual Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize, forthcoming from Northwestern University Press in April 2020. Ama has been awarded support from Cave Canem, Jerome, Robert Rauschenberg, and Saltonstall foundations, as well as from Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Crosstown Arts, Hedgebrook, and the MacDowell Colony. Her poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast Online, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Ama is the recipient of a 2017 Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, The Georgia Review’s 2018 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize, a 2019 Disquiet Literary Prize, and a 2019 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship.
 photo: Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Born in St. Thomas, U.S.V.I. and raised in Apopka, Florida, Nicole Sealey is the author of Ordinary Beast, finalist for the PEN Open Book and Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards, and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named, winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. Her other honors include a 2019 Rome Prize, the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from The American Poetry Review, the Poetry International Prize and a Daniel Varoujan Award, grants from the Elizabeth George and Jerome Foundations, as well as fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, CantoMundo, Cave Canem, MacDowell Colony and the Poetry Project. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere. Nicole holds an MLA in Africana studies from the University of South Florida and an MFA in creative writing from New York University. Formerly the executive director at Cave Canem Foundation, she is a 2019-2020 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University.
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 photo: Ladan Osman
Donika Kelly is the author of the chapbook AVIARIUM (fivehundred places 2017), & the full-length collection BESTIARY (Graywolf 2016), winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the 2017 Hurston/Wright Award for poetry, & the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. BESTIARY was long listed for the National Book Award (2016) & was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award & a Publishing Triangle Award (2017). A Cave Canem Graduate Fellow & recipient of a Lannan Residency fellowship & a fellowship to the Fine Arts Work Center, Donika received her MFA in Writing from the Michener Center for Writers & a Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University. She is an Assistant Professor at Baruch College, where she teaches creative writing.
 photo: Nancy Crampton
Evie Shockley is the author of semiautomatic (2017), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize & the LA Times Book Prize, & winner of the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. She has published four other collections of poetry—including the new black (2011), which won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in 2012—& a critical study, Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry (2011). Her honors also include the 2015 Stephen Henderson Award for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry & the 2012 Holmes National Poetry Prize. She is spending 2018-2019 as a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Shockley is Professor of English at Rutgers University–New Brunswick.
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Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon is the author of Open Interval, a 2009 National Book Award finalist, & Black Swan, winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, as well as Poems in Conversation and a Conversation, a 2008 chapbook collaboration with Elizabeth Alexander, & Leading With a Naked Body, a forthcoming (2019) chapbook collaboration with Leela Chantrelle. She has written plays & lyrics for The Cherry, an Ithaca, NY arts collective & her work was featured in Courage Everywhere, celebrating women’s suffrage & the fight for political equality, at National Theatre London. Currently at work on The Coal Tar Colors, her third poetry collection, & Purchase, a collection of essays, she teaches at Cornell University.