scratchin’ and survivin’

makalani bandele

makalani bandele is an Affrilachian Poet and Cave Canem fellow. He has also received fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council, Millay Colony, and Vermont Studio Center. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame with a BA in the Program of Liberal Studies, as well as a graduate of Shaw University with a Master of Divinity in Biblical Studies, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Kentucky. His work has been published in several anthologies, and widely in print and online journals, African-American Review, Killens Review of Arts and Letters, and PLUCK! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture, most notably. Work from his book, under the aegis of a winged mind, which won the 2019 Autumn House Press Poetry Prize appears in Prairie Schooner, Foundry, 32poems, and North American Review. Most recently, poems and poem videos from his latest manuscript appear in Washington Square Review, Poetry Northwest, and Inverted Syntax. His collection of poems, hellfightin’, is his only other full-length work, was published by Aquarius Press in 2011.