Kwoya Fagin Maples with Katrina Smolinsky

Kwoya Fagin Maples is a writer from Charleston, S.C. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama and is a graduate Cave Canem Fellow. She is the author of Mend (University Press of Kentucky, 2018) and a chapbook from Finishing Line Press, Something of Yours (2010). Her work is published in several journals and anthologies including Blackbird Literary Journal, Obsidian, Berkeley Poetry Review, The African-American Review, Pluck!, Cave Canem Anthology XIII, The Southern Women’s Review, and Sow’s Ear Poetry Review. Maples teaches Creative Writing at the Alabama School of Fine Arts and directs a three-dimensional poetry exhibit which features poetry and visual art including original paintings, photography, installations and film.

Katrina Smolinsky is a poet from the Olympic Pennisula, a graduate of The Evergreen State College, and an MFA candidate at the College of Charleston. In collaboration with the Gibbes Museum of Art, she works as a poetry instructor at St. John’s High School.