Angel Nafis
Angel Nafis is an American poet and spoken word artist. She is the author of BlackGirl Mansion. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Early life
Nafis grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she attended Huron High School. She struggled through school, but graduated in 2006. She was on the Ann Arbor Youth Poetry Slam Team in 2005 and 2006.She was raised Muslim. Her mother died when she was young, so she was raised by her father. Her father's family was from New York and Georgia. Her mother's family was from Chicago and Mississippi.
Education
Nafis earned her BA at Hunter College, and is an MFA candidate in poetry at Warren Wilson College.Career
Nafis is a Cave Canem fellow, the recipient of a Millay Colony residency, and the founder and curator of the Greenlight Bookstore Poetry Salon's readings and writing workshops.With poet Morgan Parker, she runs The Other Black Girl Collective, a Black feminist poetry duo that tours internationally.
Her work has appeared in outlets including the BreakBeat Poets Anthology, Buzzfeed Reader, the Rumpus, Poetry, FOUND Magazine’s Requiem for a Paper Bag, Decibels, The Rattling Wall, Union Station Magazine, The Bear River Review, MUZZLE Magazine, Prelude Mag, Sixth Finch, and Mosaic Magazine.
''BlackGirl Mansion''
Her book BlackGirl Mansion received positive reviews. Writer Ashley Ford wrote for Elle, "Do not be fooled by the size of this work. There is nothing here to skip, forget, or misremember."Danez Smith, writing for MUZZLE Magazine, called the book "a heaven I want to live in. Her poems on family & lost, of need to love and need to be loved, on the black of her skin and the black of this world all sing their songs so loud, tipsy, and brilliant. They make you want to read the whole thing out loud, to give the world back the beauty, which it has given us through Angel. That beauty is Angel’s proof of pain, of love, of fun, of lust, of all the things a human can and should experience, is so brilliantly fit into her poems and we are lucky enough to be sharing this earth right now to get to experience that."
Mira Jacob, writing for The Los Angeles Review of Books, said, "There’s so much to pull out and admire in here, but what I love the most is the way her poems read like songs I should have known my whole life. You know when that happens with a single poem? It happens a lot in here. This book will show you how to live, if you let it."
Personal life
Nafis lives in Brooklyn with artist, writer, and musician Shira Erlichman, with whom she is in a relationship. Together, they toured for the ODES FOR YOU tour.In June 2020, Nafis and hundreds of other poets signed an open letter to the Poetry Foundation asking for the immediate resignation of both president Henry Bienen and board of trustees chair Willard Bunn III, as well as other demands relating to the foundation's response to the killing of George Floyd.
Awards and honors
- Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation
- NEA Creative Writing fellowship
Books
- BlackGirl Mansion.
Selected list of published poems
| Title | Year | Publication/anthology | Reprinted/collected |
| "Love on Flatbush Avenue" | 2018 | Black Girl Magic, Haymarket Books, 1st ed. 119. | |
| "Ghazal for Becoming Your Own Country" | 2016 | Poetry Foundation | Black Girl Magic, Haymarket Books, 1st ed. 194. |
| "When I Realize I’m Wearing My Girlfriend’s Ex-Girlfriend’s Panties" | brooklynpoets.org | ||
| "Woo Woo Roll Deep" | 2017 | BuzzFeed News | |
| "Angel Nafis" | Poetry Foundation | ||
| "Omen to Get Your Ass Up" | 2017 | them.us | |
| "Ode to Shea Butter" | Prelude Mag | ||
| "Ode to Lois" | Prelude Mag | ||
| "Ode to Voicemail" | 2015 | Sixth Finch | |
| "Why R&B First Thing In The Morning, Why R&B Above All" | 2015 | The Rumpus | |
| "Angel's Heart Clowns the Ocean" | MUZZLE Magazine | ||
| "King of Kreations" | 2018 | poetry.org | |
| "Angel's Heart Reasons with Her Dad" | MUZZLE Magazine | ||
| "I Know I’m Pretty Cuz The Boys Tell Me So" | 2007 | The Bear River Review | |
| "Directions to Finding You" | 2009 | Requiem For a Paper Bag Anthology | |
| "Tarbaby Fly" | 2012 | The Rattling Wall | |
| "Open" | 2012 | The Rattling Wall | |
| "Ghazal for My Sister" | 2013 | Mosaic Magazine | The BreakBeat Poets Anthology |
| "Betty Boop" | 2013 | Mosaic Magazine | |
| "Legend" | 2015 | The BreakBeat Poets Anthology | |
| "Gravity" | 2015 | The BreakBeat Poets Anthology | |
| "Conspiracy" | 2015 | The BreakBeat Poets Anthology |