Hafizah Geter
Hafizah Augustus Geter is a poet, writer, and literary agent. She was born in Nigeria and grew up in Ohio and South Carolina. Her 2020 debut poetry collection, Un-American, was highly lauded, and her most recent work, The Black Period: On Personhood, Race & Origin, received the 2023 PEN Open Book Award and the 2023 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ+ Nonfiction, as well as being named a New Yorker Best Book of 2022, among many other honors.
Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Harper’s Bazaar, The New Yorker and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day. Geter has been awarded fellowships from Cave Canem, VONA/Voices, and Civitella Ranieri, among others. She sits on the Brooklyn Literary Council and serves as the Council’s poetry committee co-chair for the Brooklyn Book Festival.
Geter has taught writing at Columbia College Chicago and at the MFA programs of Manhattanville College and Columbia University. She lives with her wife in Brooklyn, New York, and is currently working on a nonfiction project and a novel about supercontinents and migration.
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Photo: Beowulf Sheehan