AWARDS AND HONORS
2025 Rhysling Short Poem Nominations for New Homestead and Generation Ship
Rhysling Long Poem Nominations for Melissa and Giant Robot and His Person
Synkroniciti, Identity Poetry Contest winner, 2025, for “Black Orpheus V”
2024 27th Annual Critters Readers' Poll Best Poem “Giant Robot and his Person”
2024 IGNYTE Award for Best Poem “My mother, she ate me”
6th Annual Halloween Horror Haiku Contest 2nd Place Winner 2024
Rhysling Award Long Poem Honorable Mention 2024 for Pilot
Dwarf Stars Award Nomination 2024 for “gondoliers strum strings”
2024 Individual Artist Grant from NYSCA for Disability Poetics
5th Annual Halloween Horror Haiku Contest Winner 2023
Rhysling Long Poem Award 2023 3rdplace for Igbo Landing II
Dwarf Stars Award Nominations 2023 sky memorial, thinning, Time Travel II
Rhysling Award Short Poem Nomination 2023 for Medusa
Disabled Artist Grant From NYFA 2023
“mutants now rise” 4th annual Halloween Horror Haiku Challenge 2nd place winner
Grand Master of Fantastic Poetry, 2022 Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA)
Dwarf Stars Award Nomination 2022 for “riding lightning”
Rhysling Award Short Poem Nomination 2022 for Stratospherics I
Rhysling Award Long poem Nomination 2022 for Child Price
2022 Individual Artist Grant from NYSCA for AfroFuturist, Pastoral, Speculative Poetry
2021 Elgin Award for OTHERWHERES
2021 Nominations for Best of the Net
2021 Artist Grant from The Arts Council of the Southern Finger Lakes for Now Voyager
Sundress Anthology Pitch Competition (Speculative Poetry by BIPOC creators, December 2020)
Scholarship to World Fantasy Convention, October 2020
Grant for Speculative Sundays Poetry Reading Series from The Arts Council of the Southern Finger Lakes, 2020
Scholarship to North American Hand Papermakers Conference, Fall 2020
Scholarship to Teaching Artist Project, Teaching Artist Institute of Rochester, Fall 2020
Grant to CoNZealand, July 2020
Individual Artist Grant from The Arts Council of the Southern Finger Lakes, 2020,
for Words on Wheels Project, 2020
Awaiting your Return, Poets Reading the News, Oct. 19, 2018
a ghazal for Jamal Kashoggi, (nominated for a Pushcart Prize)
Montserrat, Minerva Rising, Roots Wings and Everything in Between
Issue 15 Fall 2018, Minerva Rising Press (nominated for a Pushcart Prize)
Best of the Net Nomination for River Road , 2017
Iron Horse Review, Photofinish contest winner, 2016
Being Here, semifinalist, Quills Edge Press, 2016
Rock The Chair Winner, Yellow Chair, June 2016
Poets Respond Winner (ENDANGERED) June 2016
Red Paint Hill Publishing Bryant-Lysembee Editor’s Prize for Them Gone, 2015
Poets Respond, (Resignation), November 2015
Short Poem Winner, Science Fiction Poetry Association, 2015
Finalist, Washington Prize Word Works Poetry Competition, 2015
Walker Foundation Scholarship to Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, 2005
Cave Canem Fellow, 2002-2004
Two Voices/Two Pages Winner Geva Theater 2004
New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, 2003
Artists Crossroads Grant for Words in Motion, 2003
Awardee in the Nonrhyming Poetry Writer's Digest annual competition, 2002
Honorable Mention, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (2000)
edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling: for "The Becoming" (DARK MATTER)
Artist-in-Residence, Women’s Studio Workshop, 2001
Fellowship, Hurston-Wright Writers’ Week, 2001
Poet-in-Residence, Chautauqua Institution, 1997
Writer's Digest Book Awards, 1996
Ragdale U.S.–Africa Fellowship, 1993
The International Who's Who in Poetry
Finalist, 1991 Open Voice competition
National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, 1990
Finalist, Barnard New Women Poets Series -1990
Finalist, MacDonald's Black Literary Achievement Award, 1989
The International Authors and Writers Who's Who
New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, 1987
Two Thousand Notable American Women
Who's Who in U.S. Writers, Editors, and Poets
Finalist, Walt Whitman Award, Spring 1983
Sterling Brown Award, Williams College, Spring 1975
Academy of American Poets, Honorable Mention, 1975, 1974, 1973,
Williams College