Yalie Kamara

Yalie Kamara is a Sierra Leonean-American writer, educator, and researcher from Oakland, California. She is the author of two collections of poetry, A Brief Biography of My Name (Akashic Books/African Poetry Book Fund, 2018) and When The Living Sing (Ledge Mule Press, 2017). Kamara has been nominated for a Pushcart prize. She has received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, the National Book Critics Circle Emerging Critics Fellow and Callaloo (poetry). She earned an MFA in Creative Writing (poetry) from Indiana University, Bloomington and an MA in French Culture and Civilization from Middlebury College. A PhD candidate (ABD), she is currently pursuing doctoral studies in Creative Writing and English at the University of Cincinnati where she is a Yates fellow. Kamara's poetry, fiction, interviews, and translations have either appeared or are forthcoming in The Adroit Journal,  Callaloo, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, Black Camera: An International Journal, Puerto del Sol and elsewhere. In between her studies, she worked in the field of social justice specializing in educational access and arts facilitation. She has lived in France, Brazil + US, and has a particularly soft spot for Oakland, Washington DC, and Paris. Source