Samiya bashir poems
Samiya Bashir
American writer
Samiya A. Bashir is a queer American artist, poet, and author. Much of Bashir's poetry explores the intersections of culture, change, and identity through the lens of race, gender, the body and sexuality. She is currently the June Jordan visiting professor at Columbia University of New York. Bashir is the first black woman recipient of the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize in Literature. She was also the third black woman to serve as tenured professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.
Bashir moved to Los Angeles where she became involved in theatre, before pursuing a career in writing. She attended the University of California and became the institution's poet laureate in 1994. After leaving California and moving east, Bashir worked in magazine publishing and briefly taught high school. After moving to New York City in 1997, she continued to write poetry and essays, publishing three full-length collections of poetry.