Safia Jama was born to a Somali father and an Irish American mother in Queens, New York. A Cave Canem graduate fellow, she has published poetry in Ploughshares, Boston Review, World Literature Today, Spoken Black Girl, and Poem-a-Day. Her poetry has also been featured on WNYC’s Morning Edition and CUNY TV’s Shades of US series. Jama was a semi-finalist in the Pleiades Press Editors Prize for Poetry, and she is the author of Notes on Resilience, included in the New-Generation African Poets chapbook box set (Akashic Books, 2020). Her full-length poetry collection, Crowded House, is forthcoming from Beltway Editions in 2023.

Photo credit:  Penumbra Foundation.