Nicole Sealey
Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Bio
Born in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, and raised in Apopka, Florida, Nicole Sealey is the author of Ordinary Beast, finalist for the PEN Open Book and Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards, and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named, winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. Her honors include a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from the American Poetry Review, and a Poetry International Prize, as well as fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, CantoMundo, Cave Canem, MacDowell, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Poetry Project. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry 2018, the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and elsewhere.
As a longtime arts administrator, I dedicated the last 15 years of my professional life to nurturing the careers of writers. One and a half years ago, I resigned from a position that I held dear to pursue poetry. While stepping down was a difficult decision, I know that my own creative work warrants such risks. I am grateful to the National Endowment for the Arts for this encouragement and support, this time to prioritize my creative work.