Alysia Nicole Harris

Alysia Nicole Harris is a poet, journalist, linguist, and teaching-artist. 

Harris holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University and a PhD in Linguistics from Yale University. She has been working as a performance artist and speaker since 2010, and is currently serving as the founding Arts and Soul Editor of Scalawag Magazine, which focuses on the politics and culture of the southern United States. 

In 2016, Harris published the chapbook How Much We Must Have Looked Like Stars to Stars, winning the New Women’s Voices Award. Her poetry has been described as lush in texture, full of life, and indeed alive in a profound and humane way. Harris herself conceptualizes writing as a social practice and a spiritual discipline, which she wants to use to talk about pain, beauty, guilt, faith, failure and joy and bring those engaged to experience a little more of the latter. She also carries this mindset into her work as an educator, supporting writers and other artists to illuminate spiritual and political themes with the light of their creative work. 

Her work has been featured in numerous publications such as Vinyl Poetry, the Letters Journal, and Solstice Literary Magazine. Her written poetry was included in the anthology The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop (2015), and Harris has performed her spoken word on stages worldwide. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice (in 2014 and 2017) and was awarded a Cave Canem Fellowship in 2015. Harris’s work is collaborative and connected to place and community; this is illustrated by the part she played in the founding of the Artist Inn Detroit and The Strivers Row collective.