Joy Priest

Joy Priest is an American poet, editor, and academic from Louisville, Kentucky. She is the author of Horsepower, winner of the 2019 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, selected by Natasha Trethewey, and the editor of Once a City Said: A Louisville Poets Anthology. She is an assistant professor in the MFA Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh and Curator of Community Programs & Practice at the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics (CAAPP).

Early life and education

Priest was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, near Churchill Downs. She received a B.S. in journalism from the University of Kentucky, and a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Houston. Her debut collection, Horsepower, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in September 2020 as part of the Pitt Poetry Series, after Natasha Trethewey selected it as the winner of the 2019 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, awarded by the Association of Writers & Writing Programs.

In 2023, Priest edited Once a City Said: A Louisville Poets Anthology (Sarabande Books), a collection of thirty-seven Louisville poets conceived in the aftermath of the 2020 Louisville protests following the death of Breonna Taylor. Boston Review, The New Republic, and Sewanee Review, among others.

Awards and honors

2019 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, Association of Writers & Writing Programs 2020 Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize, American Poetry Review 2021 Literary Fellowship in Poetry, National Endowment for the Arts 2023 Aiken Taylor Award lecturer, Sewanee Review

Works

Poetry collections Horsepower (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020) The Black Outside (Duke University Press, forthcoming 2027)

Edited anthologies Once a City Said: A Louisville Poets Anthology (Sarabande Books, 2023)