Asim Poems Included in Two Major Anthologies

Professor Jabari Asim will have work featured in two anthologies of African American poetry being released January 30.

His poem, “Tell Them What You Want” will appear in This Is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets (Little, Brown), edited by Kwame Alexander. His work also will appear in Poemhood: Our Black Revival (HarperCollins), edited by alum Amber McBride, MFA ’13, along with Erica Martin and Taylor Byas.

“It’s immensely gratifying to be included alongside so many gifted artists, and I’m especially glad to be a part of Amber’s important project,” Asim said.

LitHub called This is the Honey a collection of “resilient joy,” and included it their list of “Most Anticipated Books of 2024.”

Publisher’s Weekly said of Poemhood, “This deep and complex assemblage of Black poetry culminates in a joyful, painful, and emotionally rich experience.”

Asim is the author of eight books for adults, including most recently his novel, Yonder (Simon & Schuster, 2022) and Stop and Frisk: American Poems (Bloomsday Literary, 2020). He also has written 13 children’s books and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Arts in 2009. He was the former editor of Crisis, the NAACP’s magazine of politics, culture, and ideas; and was an editor/columnist at the Washington Post.

McBride is an assistant professor at the University of Virginia. Her poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, Provincetown Arts, Willow Springs, the Cincinnati Review, and The Rumpus, among others, and she was twice nominated for Best on the Net Awards. She also is the author of two novels in verse, including Me: Moth (Macmillan, 2021),  a finalist for the Morris Award and National Book Award in Children’s Literature, and winner of the John Steptoe–Coretta Scott King Award.