Arisa White is the author of several poetry collections, which have been nominated for the NAACP Image Award, Lambda Literary Award, California Book Award, and Wheatley Book Award. Her most recent publication is the poetic memoir Who’s Your Daddy; she is the co-editor of Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart, and co-author of Biddy Mason Speaks Up, the second book in the Fighting for Justice Series for young readers, which won the Maine Literary Book Award for Young People’s Literature and the Nautilus Book Award Gold Medal for Middle-Grade Nonfiction. Biddy Mason Speaks Up is now included in the New York City Department of Education’s Mosaic curriculum.
As a visiting scholar at San Francisco State University’s The Poetry Center, Arisa developed a digital special collections on Black Women Poets in The Poetry Center Archives. She has received residencies, fellowships, or scholarships from The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, Juniper Summer Writing Institute, Headlands Center for the Arts, Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Hedgebrook, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Prague Summer Program, Fine Arts Work Center, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. As the creator of the Beautiful Things Project, Arisa curates poetic collaborations that are rooted in Black queer women’s ways of knowing.
Visit her website here.