Destiny O. Birdsong and Ananda Lima join the masthead of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Credit: Destiny O. Birdsong and Beowulf Sheehan.
New York, NY—April 9, 2024—Poets & Writers, the nation’s leading nonprofit organization serving creative writers and publisher of Poets & Writers Magazine, today announced that Destiny O. Birdsong and Ananda Lima have been added to the magazine’s masthead as contributing editors.
Birdsong and Lima, who join a roster of contributing editors that includes Michael Bourne, Jeremiah Chamberlin, Jofie Ferrari-Adler, Rigoberto González, Debra Gwartney, Dana Isokawa, Tayari Jones, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Clint Smith, and Esmé Weijun Wang, will work with editor in chief Kevin Larimer to contribute articles Poets & Writers Magazine, pitch story ideas, and offer feedback on the magazine’s content.
“Destiny O. Birdsong and Ananda Lima are powerful writers who each offer a rich perspective,” said Larimer. “Their addition to our stellar lineup of contributing editors will add further breadth and depth to our coverage, ensuring that Poets & Writers Magazine reflects the multifaceted literary and publishing communities while illuminating the diverse pathways and possibilities available to writers.”
Destiny O. Birdsong is a writer whose work has appeared in the Paris Review Daily, Poets & Writers Magazine, African American Review, The Best American Poetry 2021, and elsewhere. She has received support from Cave Canem, Callaloo, Jack Jones Literary Arts, Pink Door, MacDowell, the Ragdale Foundation, and Tin House. Her debut poetry collection, Negotiations, was published by Tin House Books in 2020 and was longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Voelcker Award. Her debut novel, Nobody’s Magic, published by Grand Central in 2022, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, named a finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and won the 2022 Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction. She earned her BA in English and history from Fisk University, and her MFA in poetry and PhD in English from Vanderbilt University. In 2022 she was selected as the Hurston-Wright Foundation’s inaugural Writer-in-Residence at Rutgers University in Newark, and she currently serves as an Artist-in-Residence at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
Ananda Lima is a poet, translator, and fiction writer, author of Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil, forthcoming in June 2024 from Tor Books, and Mother/land (Black Lawrence Press, 2021), winner of the Hudson Prize. Her work has appeared in four chapbooks, including Amblyopia (Bull City Press, 2020), as well as publications such as Poets & Writers Magazine, the American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. She has been awarded the inaugural WIP Fellowship by Latinx-in-Publishing, sponsored by Macmillan Publishers. She has an MA in Linguistics from UCLA and an MFA in Creative Writing in Fiction from Rutgers University in Newark. She has taught at various institutions including UCLA, Rutgers University, and the Fine Arts Work Center, and has served as a mentor at the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Immigrant Artist Program. Her voice was praised as “singular and wise” by Cathy Park Hong. Craft, her fiction debut, has received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, which described it as “one of the most original and unforgettable reads of the year.” Originally from Brazil, she lives in Chicago.
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Poets & Writers is the primary source of information, support, and guidance for poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers in the United States. Our mission is to foster the professional development of poets and writers, to promote communication throughout the literary community, and to help create an environment in which literature can be appreciated by the widest possible public.
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