Aracelis Girmay is a writer, teacher, aunt, and mother. She is the author of three books of poems and is the editor of How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton. For her work she has received the Whiting Award, the Isabella Gardner Award, and the GLCA New Writers Award. Her books have also been named finalists for the Connecticut Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Hurston/Wright Award, and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Most recently, Girmay's poetry and essays have been published in The Paris Review, Granta, Black Renaissance Noire, and PEN America, among other publications. She is on the editorial board of the African Poetry Book Fund, and she lives and reads with her family in Brooklyn, New York.