“I want memory to be as whole as possible. Not just what people did, but how they did it. I want to understand why they did it. I want to know who they were so I can know who I am.”
— Lucille Clifton
photo credit Rae Leone Allen
simóne j banks is a writer poet interested in listening. Lately, her writing has immersed itself infinitely in the study of Black ecologies, with a focus on land, water-bodies, air and plant life including African American herbalism.
She is a 2024 Hurston/Wright Writer-in-Residence and a 2024 Courage To Write Finalist for The de Groot Foundation. Her work has appeared in the Santa Fe Writers Project, About Place Journal/Black Earth Institute, eMerge Journal and is forthcoming in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora and Root Work Journal. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Louisiana State University, where she earned the William Jay Smith Thesis Award in poetry. She is writing her debut collection of poetry, ‘continuum’ a poetry + photography project that seeks to restage, reimagine and restore the seen and unseen relationship between the Black body and nature.
Published Writings
Root Work Journal, Between The Forest + The Trees volume 2, issue 2, 2023
Title: What does the exposure of a violated body yield?
Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, issue 49.1, 2023
Title: blacksound/\verdantdreams
About Place Journal/Black Earth Institute, Spring 2022, poetry publication
Title: between another hour of freedom
eMerge, Winter 2022 and Spring 2022, poetry publications
Titles: December and Everything After and The Rupture/The Silence
Santa Fe Writers Project, Winter 2021, poetry publication
Title: A Nightmare Called Tonight
