Safia Jama was born in Queens, New York to a Somali father and an Irish-American mother. A Cave Canem graduate fellow, she studied English at Harvard College and earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Rutgers University-Newark. Her poetry appears in RHINO, Toe Good Poetry, Reverie: Midwest African American Review, The New Sound, Cooper Street, and Muftah Magazine. The Offing featured her poetry in a round-up of “rebel women” in “I Slay: 11 Women Artists & Writers Get Us into Formation.” Safia’s reviews have been spotlighted by the Poetry Foundation and her essays can be read at NPR’s Schoolbook and Boston Review. Safia is a poetry reader for Epiphany Magazine and the nonfiction editor at Apogee Journal.

Photo credit: Jess X. Chen