Reggie Harris (poet)

Last updated

Reginald M. Harris, Jr. (born 1960 in Annapolis, Maryland) is a poet and writer and winner of the 2012 Cave Canem/Northwestern University Poetry Prize. [1]

Contents

Biography

Reggie Harris was born in Annapolis, Maryland and raised in Baltimore. He attended Baltimore City Public Schools, graduated from Gilman School, and received a B.A. in Political Science from Randolph-Macon College. A Cave Canem Foundation Fellow, he is Consulting Project Manager for Lambda Literary Foundation’s Learn with Lambda Program. From 1983-1987 he was a member of the United States Coast Guard, receiving a Commandant's Letter of Commendation Ribbon, Good Conduct Medal, Antarctic Service Medal and an honorable discharge. After working for Radio Shack/Tandy Corporation and Baltimore Magazine, he joined the Enoch Pratt Free Library in 1990. In 2001 he was named Head of the Information Technology Support Department, in charge of IT support and public computer training. He left Baltimore to become Poetry in the Branches Coordinator and Information Technology Director for Poets House in New York City in 2010 and became Director of Library and Outreach Services in 2015. [2] Poets House suspended operations due to Covid-19 in December 2020.

Creative Work

Reggie Harris's poetry, fiction, reviews and articles have appeared in numerous journals and websites, including African-American Review, BuzzFeed, Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, MELUS, North American Review, and the Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade, Of Poetry and Protest: Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin, and Voices Rising: Celebrating 20 Years of Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Writing anthologies. He helped compile and wrote the introduction to Carry the Word: A Bibliography of Black LGBTQ Books and contributed to Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United States (Emanuel S. Nelson, editor, Greenwood, 2009) and LGBTQ America Today: An Encyclopedia (John C. Hawley, editor, Greenwood, 2008).

His fiction has appeared in the anthologies Best Black Gay Erotica, His3: Brilliant Fiction by Gay Male Writers, Intimacy: Erotic Stories of Love, Lust, and Marriage by Black Men, Making the Hook-Up: Edgy Sex with Soul, Men on Men 7: Best New Gay Fiction, The Spaces Between Us: Poetry, Prose and Art on HIV/AIDS, volumes One, Two and Four of the quartet of Brown Sugar collections of Erotic Black Fiction, and other venues.

Harris's first book, 10 Tongues, was published in 2001 by Three Conditions Press. Focusing on issues of race, sexuality and family, it was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, and the ForeWord Book of the Year.

His second collection of poems, Autogeography, was published in 2013. Autogeography touches on the themes of race and sexuality in a variety of landscapes and locations, from Havana, Cuba to Baltimore. The book's manuscript was the winner of the 2012 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize. [3]

His poem "Normal," which appears in Split This Rock's The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database, was set to music by composer Brett Wery as part of Quarry Songs, a Song Cycle for Change in 2021. [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lambda Literary Awards</span> Award for published works that celebrate or explore LGBT themes

Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the "Lammys", are awarded yearly by Lambda Literary to recognize the crucial role LGBTQ writers play in shaping the world. The Lammys celebrate the very best in LGBTQ literature. The awards were instituted in 1989.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Essex Hemphill</span> American writer and activist (1957–1995)

Essex Hemphill was an openly gay American poet and activist. He is known for his contributions to the Washington, D.C. art scene in the 1980s, and for openly discussing the topics pertinent to the African-American gay community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lesbian literature</span> Subgenre of literature with lesbian themes

Lesbian literature is a subgenre of literature addressing lesbian themes. It includes poetry, plays, fiction addressing lesbian characters, and non-fiction about lesbian-interest topics. A similar term is sapphic literature, encompassing works that feature love between women that are not necessarily lesbian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samiya Bashir</span> American writer

Samiya A. Bashir is a queer American artist, poet, and author. Much of Bashir's poetry explores the intersections of culture, change, and identity through the lens of race, gender, the body and sexuality. She is currently the June Jordan visiting professor at Columbia University of New York. Bashir is the first black woman recipient of the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize in Literature. She was also the third black woman to serve as tenured professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Afaa M. Weaver</span> American writer

Afaa Michael Weaver, formerly known as Michael S. Weaver, is an American poet, short-story writer, and editor. He is the author of numerous poetry collections, and his honors include a Fulbright Scholarship and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pew Foundation, and Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. He is the Director of the Writing Intensive at The Frost Place.

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 workshops across the United States. It is based in Brooklyn, New York.

Assotto Saint was a Haitian-born American poet, publisher and performance artist, who was a key figure in LGBT and African-American art and literary culture of the 1980s and early 1990s.

Becky Birtha is an American poet and children's author who lives in the greater Philadelphia area. She is best known for her poetry and short stories depicting African-American and lesbian relationships, often focusing on topics such as interracial relationships, emotional recovery from a breakup, single parenthood and adoption. Her poetry was featured in the acclaimed 1983 anthology of African-American feminist writing Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, edited by Barbara Smith and published by Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. She has won a Lambda Literary award for her poetry. She has been awarded grants from the Pew Fellowships in the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts to further her literary works. In recent years she has written three children's historical fiction picture books about the African-American experience.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lisa L. Moore</span> Canadian-born American academic and poet

Lisa L. Moore is a Canadian–American academic and poet. She earned a B.A. in English with honors at Queen's University in 1986, and then completed her doctorate at Cornell University in 1991. Principal themes in Moore’s work include the centrality of love between women to literary genres such as the novel, the landscape arts, and the sonnet; the transatlantic and multi-racial history of feminist art and thinking; and the importance of poetry to second-wave feminist, womanist, and lesbian cultures and politics.

G. Winston James is an American poet, essayist, editor, and activist. His poetry collections include Lyric: Poems Along a Broken Road and The Damaged Good.

Ana-Maurine Lara is a Dominican American lesbian poet, novelist and Black feminist scholar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lauren K. Alleyne</span> Trinidadian-American poet and writer (born 1979)

Lauren K. Alleyne is a Trinidadian American poet, fiction and nonfiction writer, and educator born and raised in the dual-island Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago.

Bisexual literature is a subgenre of LGBT literature that includes literary works and authors that address the topic of bisexuality or biromanticism. This includes characters, plot lines, and/or themes portraying bisexual behavior in both men and women.

Black lesbian literature is a subgenre of lesbian literature and African American literature that focuses on the experiences of black women who identify as lesbians. The genre features poetry and fiction about black lesbian characters as well as non-fiction essays which address issues faced by black lesbians. Prominent figures within the genre include Ann Allen Shockley, Audre Lorde, Cheryl Clarke, and Barbara Smith.

Donika Kelly is an American poet and academic, who is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing. She is the author of the chapbook Aviarium, published with fivehundred places in 2017, and the full-length collections Bestiary and The Renunciations.

Terri Lynn Jewell was an American author, poet and Black lesbian activist. She was the editor of The Black Woman’s Gumbo Ya-Ya, which received the New York City Library Young Persons Reading Award in 1994.

Aurielle Marie is an American poet and activist. Their debut collection Gumbo Ya Ya received the 2020 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry.

Xan Forest Phillips is an American poet and visual artist from rural Ohio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Red Jordan Arobateau</span> American writer and artist (1943–2021)

Red Jordan Arobateau was an American author, playwright, poet and painter. Largely self-publishing over 80 literary works—often with autofictional elements—Arobateau was one of the most prolific writers of street lit, and a proponent of transgender and lesbian erotica.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charif Shanahan</span> American poet and translator

Charif Shanahan is an American poet and translator. His debut poetry collection Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing was the recipient of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award, selected by Allison Joseph, and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and the Publishing Triangle's Thom Gunn Award. His second collection, Trace Evidence: poems, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry and longlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry, and is a finalist for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, his second Lammie nomination.

References

  1. "Reginald Harris".
  2. "Reginald Harris papers". archives.nypl.org. 1999-02-22. Retrieved 2022-08-22.
  3. "Cave Canem » Publications".
  4. "Poetry Night featuring Quarry Songs, a Song Cycle for Change - YouTube". YouTube .