Aracelis Girmay

Background Girmay was born in Santa Ana, California. Her mother, of Puerto Rican, African American, and Mexican descent, is from Chicago. Her father, of Tigrinya people from the highlands in Eritrea, was born in Gondar. Girmay earned her B.A. in Documentary Studies with a minor in what was then called Hispanic Studies with a CISLA Certificate from Connecticut College. She earned a Master of Fine Arts from New York University. At NYU she studied poetry with Elizabeth Alexander, Derek Walcott, Eamon Grennan, Sharon Olds, and Philip Levine. While in the MFA she took an Africana course with the poet Kamau Brathwaite.

Career For many years, Girmay taught youth writing workshops in school and community settings. She worked as a teaching artist with DreamYard and the Community~Word Project before joining the faculty of Hampshire College's School for Interdisciplinary Arts. She has taught poetry and writing at several colleges and universities. She has been teaching at Stanford University since 2023.

Girmay is a recipient of the Whiting Award, the Metcalf Award, and the Academy of American Poets Fellowship. She has received fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, among other organizations.

Girmay is on the editorial board of the African Poetry Book Fund and from 2021-2025 served as the editor of BOA Editions' Blessing the Boats Selections. She served as the editor of How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton (BOA Editions) and So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth (Haymarket Books).

Awards 2009 winner, Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award 2011 finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award, poetry, for Kingdom Animalia 2011 finalist, Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, poetry, for Kingdom Animalia 2015 Whiting Award for poetry 2016 Bess Hokin Prize from Prairie Schooner 2018 finalist, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, nominated by Mahtem Shiferraw 2018, the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, chosen by Elizabeth Alexander 2019 Metcalf Award for poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2025 Academy of American Poets Fellowship 2026 PEN/Voelcker Award for GREEN OF ALL HEADS 2026 California Book Award (poetry) for GREEN OF ALL HEADS 2026, shortlist, Griffin Poetry Prize for GREEN OF ALL HEADS

Works Teeth, Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 2007. , Changing, Changing, New York: George Braziller, 2005. , Kingdom Animalia, Rochester, NY: Boa Editions, 2011. , the black maria, Rochester, NY: BOA Editions Ltd. 2016. , What Do You Know? with Ariana Fields, Brooklyn, NY: Enchanted Lion 2021. So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth editor, Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books 2023. and was a flower chapbook with book artist Valentina Améstica, NY, NY: Center for Book Arts 2023. Kamau and ZuZu Find a Way with Diana Ejaita, Brooklyn, NY: Enchanted Lion 2024. GREEN OF ALL HEADS, Rochester, NY: Boa Editions, 2025.