t’ai freedom ford is a New York City high school English teacher and Cave Canem Fellow. She received her MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Ivy, The Brooklyn Review, Bronx Biannual and Kweli. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Drunken Boat, Sinister Wisdom, No, Dear, The African American Review, Vinyl, Muzzle, Poetry and others. Her work has also been featured in several anthologies including The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. In 2012 and 2013, she completed two multi-city tours as a part of a queer women of color literary salon, The Revival. In 2014, she was the winner of The Feminist Wire’s inaugural poetry contest judged by Evie Shocklee. She is a 2015 Center for Fiction Fellow and the Poetry Project’s 2016 Emerge-Surface-Be Poetry fellow. Winner of the 2015 To the Lighthouse Poetry Prize, her first poetry collection, “how to get over” is forthcoming Spring 2017 from Red Hen Press. t’ai lives and lo