BLACK SUNFLOWERS
POETRY PRESS

Rabha is Egyptian, from Abu Dhabi, and based in Chicago. She has a Bachelor of Arts from New York University Abu Dhabi graduate, and completed an MFA in Writing at School of the Arts Institute of Chicago. She is the winner of the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, 2020 and has published her work in Oyes Review, Collected 2018, Airport Road, Electra Street and Strange Horizons. She helms Scond Draft Press

Sarah is a poet, as well as writer of fiction, nonfiction, audiowalks and maker of artistbooks. Her second poetry collection, melt (Waterloo Press, 2020), draws on these various forms to create an unsettling intimacy with the vastness of ocean. Her site specific pieces have been told through geocaching, augmented reality, micro print, performance and audio across England and Scotland. Her work has been shortlisted for the 2014 New Media Writing Prize, the 2017 Ivan Juritz Prize for Creative Experiment, the 2019 Hinterland Competition and the 2019 Forward Prize for Poetry.

Deshawn McKinney is an American writer and performer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His art, grounded in hip-hop, is used as a means of exploring liberation and the delicate balance of existence. Deshawn has performed for and built with audiences around the world and has met with students in Kingston, Jamaica to share art and speak to collective freedom, and headlined Toast Poetry in Norwich. He holds an MSc in Social Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and an MA in Poetry from the University of East Anglia.

Leo Smith is a queer transmasculine poet from Inglewood, CA and Smith College graduate. They have served as associate editor at Exposition Review, worked for The Massachusetts Review and were a 2023 Roots Wounds Words Poetry Fellow. Poems “Drive Home” and “Haibun of This Heart’s Insides” (from this set) were awarded the Rosemary Thomas Poetry Prize at Smith College. Smith’s work also appears in Arcanum Magazine and ANMLY.

Morgan Christie has won a host of literary awards including the 2017 Alexander Posey Chapbook Prize, the 2018 Likely Red Fiction Chapbook award and the 2022 Digging Press chapbook prize for 'People Without Wings'. Her first full length short story collection was published by Tolsun Books in 2020. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and she has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Look out for another work from Morgan currently in development here at Black Sunflowers Poetry Press!

Poet Yuu Ikeda (she/they) based in Japan loves reading, writing, art and sugary coffee. Ikeda writes poetry every day and her latest poetry collection ‘A Knife She Holds’ was published in 2022 by Newcomer Press.

From Columbia South Carolina, Olszewski was named a Top 15 Foyle Young Poet of the Year by the UK Poetry Society with her winning poem ‘At The Funeral’. Her text ‘Gap’ won a national gold medal from Scholastic Art & Writing Awards in 2019 and her work has appeared in Jasper magazine. She is currently studying English at Smith College.

JW Summerisle, a former Foyles Young Poet of the Year from Leicester, has published art and poetry online and in print. Their work has appeared in SAND, Lily Poetry Review, New Walk Museum & Gallery and the Haunted Antiques Paranormal Research Centre.

From Tucson Arizona, Effiwatt holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Provost fellow. She is currently the recipient of a Pflughaupt Fellowship in Poetry. Her work has apeared in Prompt Press and The Iowa Review.

Sienna grew up in Shanghai. She holds a B.A. in Literature from Duke University. The manuscript of her first novel was shortlisted for the Dzanc Prize for Fiction and longlisted for the Petrichor Prize. She lives, writes, and practices law in London.

Jean Prokott’s poetry collection Almost Sunset at High Noon won the Howling Bird Press Book Prize and was published in Nov 2021. She is a recipient of the AWP Intro Journals Award, the Minnesota League of Poets Grand Prize, and two National Endowment for the Humanities scholarships. She has work published in Arts & Letters, Rattle, and Great Lakes Review, among other journals. She is a graduate of Minnesota State University Mankato's MFA program, holds a Master of Science in Education from Winona State, and lives in Rochester, MN.