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Wanda Coleman—poet, storyteller and journalist—was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. Coleman was awarded the prestigious 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for Bathwater Wine from the American Academy of Poets, becoming the first African-American woman to ever win the prize, and Mercurochrome was a bronze-medal finalist for the 2001 National Book Award for Poetry. Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems was the first new collection of her work since her death in 2013. Mahogany L. Browne is a writer, organizer, and educator. She served as the Lincoln Center’s first ever poet in residence, and works as the executive director of JustMedia, a media literacy initiative designed to support the groundwork of criminal justice leaders and community members. Her books include Black Girl Magic, Chlorine Sky, Vinyl Moon, Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice, and I Remember Death by Its Proximity to What I Love, a poetry collection responding to the impact of mass incarceration on women and children. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Praise for Heart First into this Ruin “Essential....one of the most important and surprising voices in American poetry.” —Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) “Wanda Coleman, who died at the age of 67 in 2013, may be one of America’s best sonneteers but she was never celebrated as such during her lifetime because she didn’t play nice. Coleman was dismissed as too angry, too despairing, too contradictory, too unruly and too Black. As a single mother who grew up in Watts, Coleman was too honest about the failures of this nation’s deep-rooted racism at a time when editors wanted Black poetry sandpapered down for white readers.” —Cathy Park Hong, The New York Times “Poems of force and wisdom.” —Boston Globe
