Idrissa Simmonds-Nastili

2014 Alumna

Cottage: Fir

BIO: Idrissa is a poet, novelist, coach and facilitator. Recipient of the Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize, she has been a finalist for the Commonwealth Short Story Award and a New York Foundation for the Arts Grant in poetry. Her work has most recently appeared in Vogue.com, Literary Hub, WIRED Magazine, Black Renaissance Noire, Fourteen Hills Press, Room Magazine, Adirondack Review and elsewhere. She has been the recipient of fellowships and residencies from Hedgebrook, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Poets House, and VONA/Voices. She is co-editor of BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic (Haymarket Books). She curates Brunch & Word, a bi-coastal literary salon. She holds an MFA in fiction from Warren Wilson College’s Program for Writers and is at work on her first novel, which charts the lives of revolutionary Haitian women in the early twentieth century.