Keeonna Harris is a storyteller, organizer, and mother-of-five. She received her PhD in Justice Studies from Arizona State University, where her dissertation research analyzed the experiences of Black Women navigating motherhood and mass incarceration. She is an inaugural recipient of the inaugural 2018-2019 PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship. She also received the 2021 Tin House Summer Writing Residency, the 2023 Baldwin Center for the Arts Residency, a 2023 Hedgebrook Writer in Residence and the 2023 Edith Wharton Resident. Keeonna has written for Salon.com and has a chapter in the anthology So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth (Haymarket Books, 2023) and an interview in (Super)vision: On Motherhood and Surveillance (ed. Sophie Hamcher), Orbis, 2023. Her forthcoming memoir, Mainline Mama (Amistad, 2025), draws from her experiences as a Black woman, teen mother, and twenty years of raising children with an incarcerated partner while building community in the borderlands of the prison. Beyond research and writing, Keeonna emphasizes mothering in movements for justice as a tool for organizing, and as a deeply rooted connection between women, families and communities facing similar circumstances. Keeonna is committed to community and is currently working to build a support and advocacy network for mothers and children who have incarcerated partners and parents.