Khalisa Rae is an award-winning poet, educator, and journalist in Durham, NC. She is the author of Real Girls Have Real Problems and the debut poetry collection, Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat (Red Hen Press 2021), and former Senior Writer for Jezebel Magazine. Her essays are featured in Autostraddle, Catapult, LitHub, as well as articles in Jezebel, Blavity, Bitch Media, NBC-BLK, and others. Her poetry appears in Southern Humanities Review, Frontier Poetry, Florida Review, Rust & Moth, PANK, HOBART, among countless others. She is the winner of the Appy Award, Vulgar Genius, Bright Wings Poetry contest, the Furious Flower Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, among other prizes. Khalisa’s work has led her to speak in front of thousands, and her powerful poetry has graced stages at the National Poetry Slam, Women of the World Poetry Slam, and Southern Fried Poetry Slam. As an accomplished writer in poetry, nonfiction, and fiction, Khalisa has been a fellow at the Watering Hole, Winter Tangerine, and the Frost Place. Currently, she is the Publications Coordinator for Split This Rock and is the Founding EIC of Think in Ink BIPOC collective. Her YA novel in verse, Unlearning Eden, is forthcoming.In her spare time, Khalisa works to uplift the community and provide resources for emerging writers of color.
“Khalisa Rae’s Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat is like a newborn scream that’s been held in for eons. Sharp, strong, unapologetic, beautiful, and angry, the writing in this collection is a celebration of language and rhythm, and the words on the page run like the blood from a wound caused by racism. . . . this collection is not just one all fans of poetry should read; it’s one we should be assigning in schools.”—
