Biography

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 the 2021 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem, the 2021 Granum Foundation Prize, a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, the Stanley Kunitz Memorial and Poetry International Prizes, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment and New York Foundation for the Arts. She is a visiting professor at Boston University and teaches in the MFA Writers Workshop in Paris program at New York University.

Project: The Ferguson Report: An Erasure

During the month-long Camargo residency, the project on which I plan to focus is The Ferguson Report: An Erasure, a book-length poem lifted from the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Ferguson report, which details bias policing and court practices in Ferguson, Missouri. Despite the formal quality of the DOJ’s report, the erasure uncovers lyric narratives that move from meditative to matter of fact, offering a creative alternative to the formal document. Unlike background music intended to be an unobtrusive accompaniment, the report as backdrop is meant to be meddlesome.