DaMaris B. Hill
“History can be so narrow in the ways that they talk about a person's life.”
READ
Watch
“Urgent...readers are lucky to be with her in these pages.”
“[A] moving narrative-in-verse ode to the innocence, wonder and complexities of Black girlhood.””
“Stunning. It feels as if I have been waiting for this book my whole life. It’s a call and response, a poetic dialogue, a deep honoring of all that black women have endured and created and inspired. The voices Hill has found embody the women in her book with heart and allow us to know them in their essence. This is a brave, brilliant, beautiful account of love. Unforgettable.”
“DaMaris B. Hill writes the poetry of the bound black woman across the ages in this haunting, powerful collection. What you will read here is not just poetry, though. This book offers an education. This book bears witness. This book is a reckoning.”
“With a lyricism that sings, swings, and stings, poet and writer Hill reflects on black women who resisted violent racism and misogyny, ranging from the notable and notorious (Fannie Lou Hamer, Eartha Kitt, Ida B. Wells, Joanne Little) to lesser-known, no-less-heroic women.”
DaMaris B. Hill’s most recent book of poetry is Breath Better Spent: Living Black Girlhood (Bloomsbury 2022), called “urgent” and “luminous” in a starred Publisher’s Weekly review. Her first book is A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing (Bloomsbury, 2019), a searing and powerful narrative-in-verse that bears witness to American women of color burdened by incarceration. It was an Amazon #1 Best Seller in African American Poetry, and a Publishers Weekly Top 10 History Title for the season. A scholar as well as writer, her other books are The Fluid Boundaries of Suffrage and Jim Crow: Staking Claims in the American Heartland (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), and the chapbook, \Vi-zə-bəl\ \Teks-chərs\(Visible Textures), (Mammoth Publications, 2015). Her work has appeared in African American Review, ESPNw, Sou’Wester, Sleet Magazine, American Studies Journal, Meridians, Shadowbox, Tidal Basin Review, Reverie, Tongues of the Ocean, Women in Judaism and numerous anthologies.
In an interview with Bitch Media about A Bound Woman is a Dangerous Thing, Hill was asked how she decided who to include in the book. She notes, “I want people to be aware of what Black women are experiencing around incarceration and to resist hopelessness. I take a lot of time in the book to explain the parallels between Assata Shakur and Harriet Tubman because they’re both women who did not experience violent deaths. I wanted readers to see how many parallels there are in how society views them, the ways they’ve been demonized in their lives, and the hyper-intelligent and spiritual fortitude it took to survive. They were not just invested in their own survival but the survival of others.”
She has received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Key West Literary Seminar/Writers Workshops, Callaloo Literary Writers Workshop, Eckerd College Writers’ Conference: Writers in Paradise, Project on the History of Black Writing, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference in Sicily, The Furious Flower Poetry Center, The Urban Bush Women, The Watering Hole Poetry and others.
Hill has terminal degrees in English-Creative Writing and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She serves as an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky.
Image GALLERY
Open and right-click to download
