Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism have been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. His first full length poetry collection, The Crown Ain't Worth Much, was released in June 2016 from Button Poetry. It was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize, and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. With Big Lucks, he released a limited edition chapbook, Vintage Sadness, in summer 2017 (you cannot get it anymore and he is very sorry.) His first collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was released in winter 2017 by Two Dollar Radio and was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and The Chicago Tribune, among others. He released Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest with University of Texas press in February 2019. The book became a New York Times Bestseller, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and was longlisted for the National Book Award. His second collection of poems, A Fortune For Your Disaster, was released in 2019 by Tin House, and won the 2020 Lenore Marshall Prize. In 2021, he will release the book A Little Devil In America with Random House. He is a graduate of Beechcroft High School.
Website: www.abdurraqib.com
Frederick Luis Aldama is an award-winning author of over 45 nonfiction books as well the author of Long Stories Cut Short: Fictions from the Borderlands, the children’s book The Adventures of Chupacabra Charlie (English 2020; Spanish 2021), and bilingual picture book Con Papá/With Papá. His animation film based on The Adventures of Chupacabra Charlie releases summer 2022. Recently, he completed his illustrated YA novel The Absolutely (Almost) True Adventures of Max Rodriguez and was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters and the Ohio State University's Office of Diversity and Inclusion's Hall of Fame.
Social:
@professorlatinx
@latinxpoplabUT
Katelyn Barrett (she/her) is an Awards Analyst, currently working at the University of California, Berkeley. She resides in the Oakland, CA area. At UC Berkeley, Katelyn processes contracts and grants for researchers from a variety of sponsors. While finance may not have been the intended career path, its value in allowing others to pursue their research dreams makes it worthwhile. She hopes this experience will benefit BreakBread behind-the-scenes. Previously, Katelyn worked at SAGE Publishing where she was able to learn about the editorial process for academic journals from acquisition to print. While reading and writing are more private for her, Katelyn is always ready to cheer on those who are able to share their work. She looks forward to learning from all of you and supporting BreakBread however she can. If you are ever in Oakland, feel free to reach out for a coffee/tea chat or crochet circle.
Tarfia Faizullah is the author of two poetry collections, REGISTERS OF ILLUMINATED VILLAGES (Graywolf, 2018) and SEAM (SIU, 2014). Tarfia’s writing appears widely in the U.S. and abroad in the Daily Star, Hindu Business Line, BuzzFeed, PBS News Hour, Huffington Post, Poetry Magazine, Ms. Magazine, the Academy of American Poets, Oxford American, the New Republic, the Nation, Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket, 2019), and has been displayed at the Smithsonian, the Rubin Museum of Art, and elsewhere.
The recipient of a Fulbright fellowship, three Pushcart prizes, and other honors, Tarfia presents work at institutions and organizations worldwide and has been featured at the Liberation War Museum of Bangladesh, the Library of Congress, the Fulbright Conference, the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, the Radcliffe Seminars, NYU, Barnard, UC Berkeley, the Poetry Foundation, the Clinton School of Public Service, Brac University, and elsewhere.
Website: www.tfaizullah.com
Raena Shirali is a poet, editor, and educator from Charleston, South Carolina. Her first book, GILT (YesYes Books, 2017), won the 2018 Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award, and her forthcoming collection, summonings, won the 2021 Black Lawrence Press Hudson Prize. Winner of a Pushcart Prize & a former Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University, Shirali is also the recipient of prizes and honors from VIDA, Gulf Coast, Boston Review, & Cosmonauts Avenue. She holds an MFA in Poetry from The Ohio State University Shirali and is an Assistant Professor of English at Holy Family University, where she serves as Faculty Advisor for Folio—a literary magazine dedicated to publishing works by undergraduate students at the national level. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A Day, The Nation, The Rumpus, & elsewhere. Raena lives in Philly and serves on the board for BreakBread, a literacy project serving young writers.
Twitter: @raenashirali
Insta: @raenainthemorning
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ren.renn.1
Website: www.raenashirali.com
photo by Alexis Rhone Fancher
Phil Taggart has four collections of poetry. The last two, Walking the Dog in a Time of Rage and Rick Sings, Opium Wars are published by Brandenberg Press. He has been a poetry editor for over twenty years for Art Life limited edition, and with Marsha de la O, the Askew Poetry Journal and Spillway. Phil presently hosts a weekly poetry reading at the EP Foster Library in Ventura, CA. He teaches Broadcast Digital Media at El Camino High School at Ventura College. Phil grew up in South Whittier and lives in Ventura with his wife, Marshade la O.