Nicole Sealey (born 1979) is an American poet who was born in

St. Thomas, Virgin Islands Saint Thomas ( da, Sankt Thomas) is one of the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea which, together with Saint John, Water Island, Hassel Island, and Saint Croix, form a county-equivalent and constituent district of the United States Virgin I ...

, and raised in

Apopka, Florida Apopka is a city in Orange County, Florida. The city's population was 55,000 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Orlando–Kissimmee–Sanford Metropolitan Statistical Area. ''Apopka'' comes from Seminole word ''Ahapopka'' for "Potato eating ...

, US. She is the former executive director of

Cave Canem Foundation Cave Canem Foundation is an American 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1996 by poets Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady to remedy the underrepresentation and isolation of African-American poets in Master of Fine Arts (MFA) programs and writing wor ...

. She won the 2015 Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize for ''The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named'', and her collection ''Ordinary Beast'' was a finalist for the 2018

PEN Open Book Award PEN/Open Book (known as the Beyond Margins Award through 2009) is a program intended to foster racial and ethnic diversity within the literary and publishing communities, and works to establish access for diverse literary groups to the publishing i ...

. Her poem "Pages 22–29, an excerpt from The Ferguson Report: An Erasure" (''

Poetry London ''Poetry London'' is a literary periodical based in London. Published three times a year, it features poems, reviews, and other articles. Profile Adopting the title of an earlier bimonthly publication which ran from 1939 to 1951, ''Poetry London' ...

'') won a Forward Prize for Poetry in October 2021. Sealey lives in

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

Background

Born in

, Sealey was raised in

, and received an MLA in Africana studies from the

University of South Florida The University of South Florida (USF) is a public research university with its main campus located in Tampa, Florida, and other campuses in St. Petersburg and Sarasota. It is one of 12 members of the State University System of Florida. USF is ...

. After participating from 2005 to 2010 in

workshops led by poets such as

Marilyn Nelson Marilyn Nelson (born April 26, 1946) is an American poet, translator, and children's book author. She is a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, and the former poet laureate of Connecticut, She is a winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry ...

Willie Perdomo Willie Perdomo is a Puerto Rican poet and children's book author. He is the author of ''The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon'' (Penguin Poets, 2014), a National Book Critics Circle Awards finalist, ''Where a Nickel Costs a Dime'' ( W. W. Norton ...

and Patricia Smith, Sealey decided at the age of 32 to commit to a career as a poet, going on to earn an MFA degree in creative writing at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

. Her work has appeared in ''

The Best American Poetry ''The Best American Poetry'' series consists of annual poetry anthologies, each containing seventy-five poems. Background The series, begun by poet and editor David Lehman in 1988, has a different guest editor every year. Lehman, still the general ...

'' 2018 and 2021, ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'', ''

The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Philip ...

'', and other publications. She has received fellowships and awards including from

CantoMundo CantoMundo is an American literary organization founded in 2009 to support Latino poets and poetry. It hosts an annual poetry workshop dedicated to the creation, documentation, and critical analysis of Latinx poetry. History CantoMundo was founded ...

, the

American Academy in Rome The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo (Janiculum Hill) in Rome. The academy is a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers. History In 1893, a group of American architects, ...

, the

New York Foundation for the Arts The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) is an independent 501(c)(3) charity, funded through government, foundation, corporate, and individual support, established in 1971. It is part of a network of national not-for-profit arts organizations ...

, and the Elizabeth George Foundation. In 2019, she was named a 2019–2020 Hodder Fellow at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

. From 2017 to 2019 she was the Executive Director at the Cave Canem Foundation, and was the curator for a special series of Poem-a-Day (August 31–September 11, 2020). Sealey began making erasures from the 2015

United States Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...

report detailing bias policing and court practices in

Ferguson, Missouri Ferguson is a city in St. Louis County, Missouri, United States. It is part of the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area. Per the 2020 census, the population was 18,527. History What is now the city of Ferguson was founded in 1855, when William B ...

, three years after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by police, and in October 2021, her "Pages 22–29, an excerpt from The Ferguson Report: An Erasure" (published in ''

'') won the 2021 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. The judges of the prize referred to Sealey's use of the report's "stifling obfuscations" to create "new moments of lyrical beauty and contemplation", and called her work "a poem of resonant cultural and social value".

Bibliography

* ''The Animal After Whom Other Animals are Named: Poems'' (

Northwestern University Press Northwestern University Press is an American publishing house affiliated with Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. It publishes 70 new titles each year in the areas of continental philosophy, poetry, Slavic and German literary criticism ...

, 2016, ) * ''Ordinary Beast: Poems'' (

Ecco Press Ecco is a New York-based publishing imprint of HarperCollins. It was founded in 1971 by Daniel Halpern as an independent publishing company; Publishers Weekly described it as "one of America's best-known literary houses." In 1999 Ecco was acquired ...

, 2017, )

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sealey, Nicole 1979 births Living people 21st-century African-American women 21st-century African-American writers 21st-century American women writers African-American poets African-American women writers American women poets People from Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands