Shaina Phenix To Be Named Something Else

About the author:

Shaina Phenix is a Black, queer poet, essayist, and educator from Harlem. She is the author of To Be Named Something Else, winner of the 2023 Miller Williams Poetry Prize (University of Arkansas Press). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in West Branch, Glass, Foglifter, the Pinch, Puerto del Sol, Frontier Poetry, Shenandoah, the Offing, and CRAFT magazine.

About the book:

To Be Named Something Else is a high-spirited celebration of Black matriarchy and lineage—both familial and literary. Centering the coming-of-age of Black femmes in Harlem, Shaina Phenix’s debut collection, in the words of series judge Patricia Smith, “enlivens the everyday—the everyday miraculous, the everyday hallelujah, the numbing everyday love, the everyday risk of just being Black and living.”

ON ORDER