+ Natalie Graham

Natalie Graham earned her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Florida and Ph.D. in American Studies at Michigan State University. Her poems have appeared in San Francisco Chronicle, Callaloo, New England Review, and Southern Humanities Review; and her articles have appeared in The Journal of Popular Culture and Transition. She is a Cave Canem fellow and associate professor of African American Studies at California State University, Fullerton. Begin with a Failed Body (U of Georgia P, 2017), her debut collection of poems, won the 2016 Cave Canem Poetry Prize.

+ Anastacia-Reneé

Anastacia-Reneé is an award-winning cross-genre writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, TEDX speaker and podcaster. Renee is the author of (v.), (Black Ocean Press), Forget It (Black Radish Press) and Answer(Me), (Winged City Chapbook Press). She has received fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, VONA, Artist Trust, Jack Straw, Ragdale, Mineral School, Hypatia in the Woods and The New Orleans Writers Residency. Anastacia-Renee's work has been anthologized in, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, Spirited Stone, Lessons from Kubotas Garden, Seismic, Seattle City of Literature, and her poetry, fiction and non-fiction has been in Foglifter, Cascadia Magazine, Pinwheel, The Fight and the Fiddle, Glow, The A-Line, Ms. Magazine, Spark, Obsidian Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora, Crab Creek Review, Alta, Catapult and many more.

+ Shann Ray

Poet and prose writer Shann Ray teaches leadership and forgiveness studies at Gonzaga University, poetry at Stanford, and poetry for the Center for Contemplative Leadership atPrinceton Theological Seminary. A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, through his research in forgiveness and genocide he has served as a visiting scholar in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, and as a poetry mentor for the PEN America Prison and Justice Writers Program. Having collaborated with painter Makoto Fujimura on a United Nations grant entitled Intercultural Dialogues through Beauty as a Language of Peace, Ray has also received the American Book Award in recognition of outstanding achievement in the context of America’s diverse literary community. Three-time High Plains Book Award winner, Bread Loaf Fellow, Bakeless Prize winner, and winner of the Foreword Book of the Year Readers’ Choice Award, his work comprises a libretto and 15 books, of which 10 are fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction including Atomic Theory 7, The Garment of Praise, Forgiveness and Power in the Age of Atrocity, Balefire, American Masculine, Sweetclover, Blood Fire Vapor Smoke, American Copper, The Souls of Others, and Transparent in the Backlight. His work has been featured in Poetry, Esquire, Narrative, McSweeney’s, Prairie Schooner, Poetry International, Big Sky Journal, the American Journal of Poetry, and Salon.

+ CooXooEii Black

If history leaves an impression, then to be born in an Indigenous nation is to figure out how the residual effects are at play today while simultaneously seeing how your hand fits into the “impression.” CooXooEii Black has begun to think of history as being “nested.” His history, his tribe’s history, and his family’s history are all nested into one, all becoming my personal history. Dr. Emily Skaja’s nested poem project laid the foundation for this chapbook. She asked CooXooEii to peel back the veil from his obsessions and name them—she challenged him to see how his poems fit together like a Russian nesting doll. He grew up with six uncles who took on the role of father figures; you’d think their life stories are tales of legend. So he took all six of his uncles and “nested” them into one character. What ensued were poems that straddle the intersection of truth and myth-making. This collection is about childhood and maturation; about the reservation and land; about an uncle who becomes a teacher; about wrestling with identity and faith; about impressions.

2023 Starshine and Clay Fellows

+ Kenny Carroll

Kenny Carroll is a writer from DC. He was the 2017 DC Youth Poet Laureate, and in 2019 received the Thomas Lux Scholarship from Sarah Lawrence. His work has been featured in Split This Rock’s The Quarry, The Hill Rag, and Beltway Quarterly, among others. He is a Watering Hole and Obsidian fellow, as well as a teacher for students of all ages. You can find him online @Kennyc113.

+ Edil Hassan

Edil Hassan is the author of Dugsi Girl (Akashic Press, 2021) which was selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani for the New Generation of African Poets series. A finalist for the 2022 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, her work has appeared in Poetry magazine, the Academy of American Poets, Guernica, and is anthologized in Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books, 2019). She is a graduate of the MFA at Washington University in St. Louis, where she is the senior poetry fellow.

EcoTheologian in Residence

+ Cynthia Briggs Kittredge

The Very Rev. Cynthia Briggs Kittredge is the eighth dean and president of Seminary of the Southwest. She was appointed in 2013 after serving on the faculty as the Ernest J. Villavaso, Jr. Professor of New Testament and as academic dean. Committed to theological education for the church, Dean Kittredge has served as a member of the Steering Committee for Theological Education in the Anglican Communion, as Chair of the Board of the Episcopal Evangelism Society, and President of the Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars. A biblical scholar valued by her colleagues for her insight and generous collegiality, Dean Kittredge is a contributor to The New Oxford Annotated Bible and the Women's Bible Commentary, and the author of Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of John and Community and Authority: The Rhetoric of Obedience in the Pauline Tradition. She co-edited The Bible in the Public Square: Reading the Signs of the Times and Walk in the Ways of Wisdom: Essays in Honor of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. She is the co-editor of the Fortress Commentary on the Bible: The New Testament (2014). She also wrote A Lot of the Way Trees Were Walking: Poems from the Gospel of Mark.

Prior to joining the seminary faculty in 1999, Dean Kittredge taught at Harvard University and the College of the Holy Cross. She serves as assisting priest at The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Austin.

She is married to Frank D. Kittredge, Jr. and they have three grown children.