Raena Shirali

Raena Shirali is a poet, teaching artist, and editor from Charleston, South Carolina. Shirali is the author of GILT (YesYes Books, 2017), winner of the 2018 Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award. Winner of a Pushcart Prize and a former Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University, she is also the recipient of prizes and honors from VIDA, Gulf Coast, Boston Review, and Cosmonauts Avenue. Shirali’s poems and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets, Blackbird, Diode, The Nation, Ninth Letter, Tupelo Quarterly, West Branch, and elsewhere. Shirali lives and teaches in Philadelphia, where she also recently co-organized We (Too) Are Philly, a summer poetry festival highlighting voices of color, and is currently an organizer for Blue Stoop, a local literary hub. She is a poetry editor for Muzzle Magazine and a poetry reader for Vinyl. Learn more at www.raenashirali.com.