"I don't think poetry is post-truth. I think poetry is a model for truth. There is a hunger for direction. I think poetry can provide that."
Yalie Kamara is a first-generation Sierra Leonean-American and a native of Oakland, California. Before she became a published writer, she worked in the field of social justice specializing in educational access and arts facilitation. Yalie was a finalist for the 2017 Brunel International African Poetry Prize and a 2017 National Book Critics Circle Emerging Critics Fellow. She is also a Callaloo Fellow in poetry. She holds a B.A. in languages and creative writing from the University of California at Riverside, and has a M.A. in French from Middlebury College in Vermont.
She is the author of two collections of poetry, When The Living Sing (Ledge Mule Press, 2017) and the forthcoming collection, A Brief Biography of My Name (Akashic Books/African Poetry Book Fund, 2018), which is a part of the New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Tano) series.
She has lived in France, Brazil, and the U.S. She currently spends a great deal of time here in Bloomington, where she is an M.F.A. candidate at Indiana University. She spoke with publisher Dave Torneo.
