I'm honored today to introduce Niki Herd.
Herd's poetry is simultaneously soft and loud, personal
and public.
With her crisp, curated prose, she not only reproduces
but exposes the complexities of the American society
in which we are all implicated.
Her poems cause us to confront the assumptions
we make about gendered and racial identity,
not through force, but through an understated,
roiling energy that often struggles to remain contained.
In addition to being the featured poet
in the current issue of Feminist Formations,
Herd has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize.
And her work has been supported by the Estrella Foundation
and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts,
among many other organizations.
She is the author of the Language of Shedding Skin,
and the editor of the forthcoming anthology, Canon
and Chorus, Black Poets and Prose.
She has been widely published, and her poems
can be found in many notable journals and anthologies,
such as Title Basin Review, and The Ringing Ear:
Black Poets Lean South.
Herd attended our own University of Arizona and Antioch
in Los Angeles, where she earned her MFA.
She currently lives in Washington DC.
After the panel, please feel free to check out
her books, which are on sale here at the symposium.
Again, we are so thankful to have such a wonderful poet
with us here today.
Please join me in welcoming Niki Herd.
[APPLAUSE]