Tyehimba Jess is the author of two books of poetry, Leadbelly and Olio. Olio won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Society of Midland Author’s Award in Poetry, and received an Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His first collection, Leadbelly, was a winner of the 2004 National Poetry Series. Jess is a Cave Canem fellow and an alumnus of the Green Mill Poetry Slam.

(Photo credit: John Midgley)