Renia White is the author of Casual Conversation (BOA Editions, 2022), a Blessing the Boats Selection chosen by Editor-at-Large Aracelis Girmay. Originally from PG County, Maryland, her family relocated to the southside of Atlanta the same year she turned 13. She went on to earn her BA from Howard University and her MFA from Cornell University where she also taught. A BOAAT fellow, she received the 2015 Hurston/Wright Foundation College Writers Award in poetry. Her work appears in publications such as The Offing, Slice, Witness, Southern Indiana Review, and elsewhere. She lives and works in New York City.
Aracelis Girmay is the winner of a 2015 Whiting Award for Poetry. She is the author of three poetry collections: the black maria (BOA Editions, 2016); Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions, 2011), which won the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Teeth (Curbstone, 2007). She is also the author/illustrator of the collage-based picture book changing, changing (Braziller, 2005). Most recently, Girmay's poetry and essays have been published in Granta, Black Renaissance Noire, and PEN America, among other places. She has received grants and fellowships from the Jerome, Cave Canem, and Watson foundations, as well as Civitella Ranieri and the NEA. She is on the faculty of Hampshire College’s School for Interdisciplinary Arts and Drew University’s low residency M.F.A. program. Originally from Santa Ana, California, she splits her time between New York and Amherst, Massachusetts.