Khalisa Rae
Khalisa Rae is a multi-hyphenate poet, educator, and journalist based in Durham, North Carolina. She is best known for her community activism and nonprofit management as the co-founder of Poet.she (Greensboro), the Invisibility Project, and Athenian Press-QPOC writer’s collective, resource center, and bookstore in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Rae is the author of Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat, her 2021 debut book of poetry. The collection is a heart-wrenching reconciliation and confrontation of the living, breathing ghosts that awaken Black women each day. This debut poetry collection summons multiple hauntings—ghosts of matriarchs that came before, those that were slain, and those that continue to speak to us, but also those horrors women of color strive to put to rest. Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throatexamines the haunting feeling of facing past demons while grappling with sexism, racism, and bigotry. They are all present: ancestral ghosts, societal ghosts, and spiritual, internal hauntings. This book calls out for women to speak their truth in hopes of settling the ghosts or at least being at peace with them.
As a champion for Black queer narratives, Khalisa’s articles appear in Fodor’s, Autostraddle, Vogue, Catapult,LitHub, Bitch Media, Black Femme Collective, Body.com, NBC-BLK, and others. Her work also appears in Electric Lit,Southern Humanities Review, Pinch, Tishman Review, Frontier Poetry, Rust & Moth, PANK, HOBART, among countless others.
Khalisa Rae is a multi-hyphenate poet, educator, and journalist based in Durham, North Carolina. She is best known for her community activism and nonprofit management as the co-founder of Poet.she (Greensboro), the Invisibility Project, and Athenian Press-QPOC writer’s collective, resource center, and bookstore in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Rae is the author of Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat, her 2021 debut book of poetry. The collection is a heart-wrenching reconciliation and confrontation of the living, breathing ghosts that awaken Black women each day. This debut poetry collection summons multiple hauntings—ghosts of matriarchs that came before, those that were slain, and those that continue to speak to us, but also those horrors women of color strive to put to rest. Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throatexamines the haunting feeling of facing past demons while grappling with sexism, racism, and bigotry. They are all present: ancestral ghosts, societal ghosts, and spiritual, internal hauntings. This book calls out for women to speak their truth in hopes of settling the ghosts or at least being at peace with them.
As a champion for Black queer narratives, Khalisa’s articles appear in Fodor’s, Autostraddle, Vogue, Catapult,LitHub, Bitch Media, Black Femme Collective, Body.com, NBC-BLK, and others. Her work also appears in Electric Lit,Southern Humanities Review, Pinch, Tishman Review, Frontier Poetry, Rust & Moth, PANK, HOBART, among countless others.
