2025 VONA Faculty

Anastacia-Reneé (She/They) is an award-winning queer writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, playwright, TEDX speaker, and co-host of the Deep End With Friends podcast. She is the author of Here in the (Middle) Of Nowhere, Side Notes from the Archivist, selected as one of “NYPL Best Books of 2023,” and, “The American Library Associations (RUSA) “Notable Books of 2024.” (v.) and Forget It. Reneé served as Seattle Civic Poet (2017-2019) during Seattle’s inaugural year of UNESCO status. Her multi-genre work has been published or is forthcoming in BOMB, MS Magazine, Logic(s), Alta, Underbelly, Callaloo, Prairie Schooner and others.

Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere

Side Notes from the Archivist

Emily Bernard is the author of Black is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine, which was named one of the best books of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews and National Public Radio and received the 2020 LA Times Christopher Isherwood Prize for autobiographical prose. Her essays have been reprinted in Best American Essays, Best African American Essays, and Best of Creative Nonfiction. A 2024-2025 fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography, Emily is the Julian Lindsay Green and Gold Professor of English at the University of Vermont, and the 2024-2025 Distinguished Scholar in Residence in the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University.

Black is the Body

Remember Me to Harlem

Jennine Capó Crucet is a novelist, essayist, and screenwriter. A recipient of the 2025 Joyce Carol Oates Prize and a PEN/O. Henry Prize, she’s the author of four books: the novel Say Hello To My Little Friend, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize; the novel Make Your Home Among Strangers, winner of an International Latino Book Award and long-listed for the Center For Fiction First Novel Prize; the multiple award-winning story collection How to Leave Hialeah; and the essay collection My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education, long-listed for the PEN/Open Book Award. A former Contributing Opinion Writer for The New York Times, her fiction and nonfiction have been widely anthologized, and her work has appeared on PBS NewsHour, NPR, and in publications such as the Atlantic, Condé Nast Traveler, The Financial Times (UK), and others. Her next book, a collaborative project with the visual artist Crystal Molinary Garcia, will be released by Burrow Press in summer 2026.

Say Hello To My Little Friend

My Time Among the Whites

Bridgett M. Davis is author of the memoir, Love, Rita, published by Harper Books in spring 2025. Her memoir, The World According To Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life In The Detroit Numbers, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a 2020 Michigan Notable Book, named a Best Book of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews, BuzzFeed, NBC News and Parade Magazine, and featured as a clue on the quiz show Jeopardy! The upcoming film adaptation will be produced by Plan B Entertainment and released by Searchlight Pictures. She is author of two novels, Into the Go-Slow and Shifting Through Neutral. She is also writer/director of the 1996 feature film Naked Acts, newly restored by Milestone Films and released to critical acclaim, screening in theaters across the US and abroad. Davis is Professor Emerita in the journalism department at Baruch College and the CUNY Graduate Center, where she taught creative, narrative and film writing.

Love, Rita

The World According to Fannie Davis

Oliver de la Paz is the Poet Laureate of Worcester, MA for 2023-2025. He is the author and editor of seven books: Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby, Requiem for the Orchard, Post Subject: A Fable, and The Boy in the Labyrinth, a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry. His newest work, The Diaspora Sonnets, is published by Liveright Press (2023), was the winner of the 2023 New England Book Award for Poetry, and was longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award. With Stacey Lynn Brown he co-edited A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry. Oliver serves as the co-chair of the Kundiman advisory board. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Poetry, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He has received grants from the NEA, NYFA, the Artist’s Trust, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, and has been awarded multiple Pushcart Prizes. He teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at PLU.

The Diaspora Sonnets

The Boy in the Labyrinth

Jamie Figueroa is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer, which “brims with spellbinding prose, magical elements, and wounded, full-hearted characters that nearly jump off the page” (Publishers Weekly). Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and shortlisted for Reading the West Debut Fiction. Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, Emergence Magazine, Boston Review, Elle, McSweeney’s and Kweli Journal among others. Figueroa’s memoir in essays, Mother Island, received a starred Kirkus review and was named among the LA Times “6 books to shake off colonialism and rethink our Latino stories.” In addition, Mother Island has been included in the “most anticipated” and “best non-fiction books of 2024” lists by SheReads, Ms. Magazine, Elle, and Hispanic Executive. Figueroa is Boricua (Afro-Taíno) by way of Ohio and is a longtime resident of northern New Mexico.

Mother Island

Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer

Fabienne Josaphat is the author of Kingdom of No Tomorrow, winner of the 2023 PEN Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction and longlisted for the 2025 Aspen Words Literary Prize. Of this novel, Barbara Kingsolver, Pulitzer Prize winner of Demon Copperhead, says, "This beautifully convincing slice of history is powered not just by good research, but by lots of suspense, compelling characters, and understated political themes that broke my heart because of how timely they remain. Kingdom of No Tomorrow will bring the fierce vision of the Black Panthers to new generations of readers, adding some stunning context to the modern Black Lives Matter movement." Josaphat's first novel, Dancing in the Baron’s Shadow, was published by Unnamed Press. Other publications include The Washington Post and Teen Vogue, and her essay, Summer is an Empty House, made the Notable Essays mentions in Best American Essays 2016. Her work has been anthologized in Eight Miami Poets, Off Shore Poets, and So Spoke the Earth. She is currently at work on a third novel.

Kingdom of No Tomorrow

Dancing in the Baron’s Shadow

Born in Philadelphia in 1955, Tim Seibles is the author of seven collections of poetry, including his most recent, Voodoo Libretto (Etruscan Press, 2022), One Turn Around the Sun (Etruscan Press, 2017), and Fast Animal (2012), which won the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and was nominated for a 2012 National Book Award. Other titles are Buffalo Head Solos (2004), Hammerlock (1999), Hurdy-Gurdy (1992), and Body Moves (1988). His poems have been published in the Indiana Review, Black Renaissance Noire, Cortland Review, Ploughshares Massachusetts Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and numerous other literary journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry. Seibles has received fellowships from both the Provincetown Fine Arts Center and The National Endowment for the Arts. He also won the Open Voice Award from the 63rd Street Y in New York City. On July 15, 2016, Seibles was named Poet Laureate of Virginia by Governor Terry McAuliffe. Seibles lives in Norfolk, Virginia, where he is a member of the English Department and MFA in writing faculty of Old Dominion University. He is a teaching board member of the Muse Writers Workshop.

Voodoo Libretto

One Turn Around the Sun