“Picasso in Africa” by Najee Dorsey

Yona Harvey

Poet and Writer

about

YONA HARVEY is the author of the poetry collections You Don’t Have To Go To Mars for Love, which won the Believer Book Award for Poetry and Hemming the Water, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She co-wrote with Roxane Gay Marvel’s World of Wakanda and co-wrote with Ta-Nehisi Coates Black Panther & the Crew. She has also worked with teenagers writing about mental health issues in collaboration with Creative Nonfiction magazine. She is a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow.

Yona can be retained as a speaker, reader, or workshop facilitator.

publications

You Don’t Have to Go to Mars for Love

A Stahlecker series selection
by Yona Harvey

Four Way Books, available now

isbn 194558856X, 9781945588563

media

Featured video Panacea Poets: prescription poems, all pandemic long

YONA HARVEY is the author of the poetry collections You Don’t Have To Go To Mars for Love (Four Way Books, 2020) and Hemming the Water (Four Way Books, 2013), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She contributed to Marvel’s World of Wakanda and co-authored with Ta-Nehisi Coates Black Panther and the Crew. She has worked with teenagers writing about mental health issues in collaboration with Creative Nonfiction magazine.

writings

I believe Langston Hughes when he writes that “poems, like prayers, possess power,” and I read what Brandi writes as a poem. Brandi’s poem has a title, line breaks, and an affirming catalog of “good things” that ends with the name of a teenaged boy, L.E., who once captured Brandi’s imagination. Maybe because I’m a poet and an older sister wanting peace of mind, I can’t help but read Brandi’s work this way. I want to believe that Brandi’s catalog of good things pulled her back from isolation. And I’m relieved to know that, for one year at least, Brandi found some comfort in writing and recording her thoughts, and that she sought help for her depression and difficulties. What she writes is part poem, part affirmation, part girl talk, and part secret. And, like Brandi, the poem keeps certain information to itself. Who, for instance, was D.J.? The name doesn’t ring the slightest bell.
 
–from “Blood, Work” in Writing Away the Stigma

 . . .

“The Sonnet District,” 
 
But you best believe
there’s a spiritualizing pattern coming into alignment, the dazzling intuition

of my female species systematically undermined for the sake of a male leader.   
Of course, I stole my files to burn later. 

 . . .

“Maher’s willful ignorance as to the value of comics inhibits him from recognizing the emotional struggles and triumphs delivered to us every Comic Book Wednesday. Why should a man whose empire revolves around his limited perspective suddenly see? For everyone else, though, there’s an opportunity to view Black Panther, Storm, Luke Cage, Misty Knight and Manifold in a new light—a light that does not blind but illuminates the depth and complexity of who these characters might be.”

Read MARVEL’S VOICES #1 at your local comic shop!

See more @ Marvel’s All The Wright Places

 . . .

“Necessarily.”

She’s got a hundred & two temperature, delivery room nurses said. You’re
gonna live, though—long enough to know you’re going
to go as quickly as you came, gonna make your mother swear by you, 

 

Poem published in Poetry Magazine

events and news

To book Yona, get in touch.

SIX x ATE: Fruition

Wednesday, December 8, 2021
7pm eastern
Virtual Event

Join us as we celebrate the culmination of 10 years of SIX x ATE in a grand finale virtual event. Featuring all-star alumni and partners: Nisha Blackwell (2016), Lenka Clayton (2013), Sarika Goulatia (2015), Yona Harvey (2012/13), Nina Sarnelle (2012/15), and Alisha B. Wormsley (2014)

register here

CHAUTAUQUA WRITERS’ FESTIVAL

June 22-25, 2022

Writing Resilience – In person and on the grounds

Register / More Info

previous news and events

SIX x ATE: Fruition

Wednesday, December 8, 2021

Online / webinar

Reading & Conversation – The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry

Thursday, November 18, 2021

Online / webinar

Book Reading Series with Four Way Books

Friday, March 5, 2021

bootlegreadingseries.com

Black Futures, Black Pasts
w/ Yona Harvey & Cherene Sharrard
(Grimoire, Autumn House Press, 2020)

Friday, October 23rd 2020

cavecanempoets.org

Reading and Conversation with Crystal Williams

Thursday, March 18th 2021
5p pacific / 7p central / 8p eastern

register | download flyer

Town Hall Seattle
Lyric World: Shin Yu Pai with Yona Harvey

In The Moment podcast
Episode 72 from October 5, 2020

Listen Now

Yona’s Reading Time Miami Book Festival

Sunday, November 15 time tba

Live stream miamibookfair.com

Reading and Conversation with Marcel Walker sponsored by Michigan State University

Thursday, February 18, 2021

facebook.com

Books Noted Live: A Reading and Conversation with Yona Harvey and Taylor Johnson (Inheritance, Alice James Books, 2020)

Friday, October 23rd 2020 @ 7pm EDT

poets.org

A Four Way Books Panel
Writing Working, and Wellness in a Time of Calamity

Friday, May 14 2021
1:15 pm pacific / 3:15 pm central / 4:15p eastern

masspoetry.org

Yona Harvey with Ted Mathys and Linda Hogan
From October 16, 2020

Watch Replay

contact

social media
Twitter: @yonaharvey
Instagram: @yonaharveywriter
Facebook: @yonaharveywriter

newsletter sign up

    Yona can be retained as a speaker, reader, or workshop facilitator through her contact form. Inquiries on publications, writings, poems and writing comics are appreciated and emails will be answered as her schedule permits.

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