All my life I’ve been travelling borders: between countries, between languages, between the self-effacement of the closet & the vulnerability/empowerment of visibility. Borders continue to shape my writing. They are especially important in poetry’s waver between silence & the need to speak out. I’m so grateful to the National Endowment for the Arts for awarding me this fellowship, which will allow me time, space, & resources to continue speaking out—to explore the complexities & contradictions of these many borders—to make visible their injustices, their separations, their violence—to celebrate the intersections of identity. I’m grateful, too, for the validation this award has given me as a poet & hope that what I write may reach & inspire even the most modest change.