photo: Sekiya Dorsett
BIO
t’ai freedom ford is a New York City high school English teacher. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in Apogee, Bomb Magazine, Calyx, Drunken Boat, Electric Literature, Gulf Coast, Kweli, Tin House, Poetry and others. Her poetry has been anthologized in A Body of Athletics edited by Natalie Diaz, The Break Beat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, Nepantla: An Anthology of Queer Poets of Color and others. t’ai has received awards and fellowships from Cave Canem, Camargo Foundation, The Center for Fiction, Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, Kimbilio, New York Foundation for the Arts, and The Poetry Project. In 2019, t’ai became a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship inaugural fellow. She is the author of two poetry collections, how to get over from Red Hen Press and & more black from Augury Books, finalist for the 2021 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, Claremont Graduate University, finalist for the 2020 Hurston-Wright Legacy Award, and winner of the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry. t’ai lives and loves in Brooklyn where she is an editor at No, Dear Magazine.