NEW YORK, NY April 15, 2008 —Aracelis Girmay writes poetry, fiction, & essays. Her book of poems, Teeth, was published by Curbstone Press in June, 2007, for which she was awarded a Pan African Literary Forum Fellowship. Girmay's collage-basedpicture book was published by George Braziller in 2005. Her work has also been published in Ploughshares, Indiana Review, Callaloo, & Bellevue Literary Review, among other journals. She has led community writing workshops in schools, museums, fish houses, cultural centers, & prisons. She currently has the honor of working with two groups of stunning young people in the Bronx: leading writing workshops at a high school and working with ACTION, an arts and activism workshop for teenagers. Girmay is a Cave Canem Fellow and an Acentos board member. Among the members of her pantheon--her deep, deep influences--are: Frida Kahlo,Nazim Hikmet, Martxn Espada, Taha Muhammad Ali, Garcia Marquez, La Lupe, Toni Morrison, Minnie Riperton, Walt Whitman, Ralph Ellison, Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Read her powerful anti-Iraq War poem "Arroz Poetica," from her collection Teeth, featured on the From the Fishouse poetry archive.

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