“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 the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Japan Creative Artists Fellowship.

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

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

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

“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

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

Yona is leading the Cave Canem Oral History Project, a collaboration between Cave Canem and the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics.

More Info

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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