KB

KB is from Stop Six, Fort Worth, Texas. They are a Black queer nonbinary poet, essayist, educator, and cultural worker. They have words published in Cincinnati Review, ANMLY, and elsewhere. Their chapbook How To Identify Yourself with a Wound (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022) won the Saguaro Poetry Prize. It was written with support from workshops with Lambda Literary, The Watering Hole, The Hurston/Wright Foundation, and elsewhere. KB is currently a PEN America Emerging Writers fellow and an African American Leadership Institute - Austin fellow.

Their cultural work spans six years. In that time, they’ve helped found two nonprofits (Interfaces and Embrace Austin) and have contributed to projects such as Austin’s first LGBTQIA+ quality of life survey, a city-wide zine on the carceral system that fundraised for community initiatives, and inclusion of chosen names on the University of Texas at Austin diplomas, among others. Currently, they are a Social Work graduate student and project lead on the Winter Storm Project, an arts anthology inspired by the 2021 Texas winter storm.

They’ve earned numerous awards for their literary and cultural work. Their debut full-length poetry collection, Freedom House, is forthcoming from Deep Vellum in 2023. Follow them on twitter/instagram at @earthtokb, access their exclusive teaching/writing/zines on patreon, and subscribe to their sporadic opinions on politics/culture through their newsletter Out of This World. They live in Austin, TX where they are writing books and trying their best.