Saida Agostini: STUNT and 2021 Poetry Chapbook Submissions

Neon Hemlock Press is pleased to announce the upcoming publication of a chapbook from Baltimore poet Saida Agostini, as well as Saida’s imminent role as our Poetry Editor.

Saida Agostini is a queer Afro-Guyanese poet whose work explores the ways that Black folks harness mythology to enter the fantastic. Saida’s poetry can be found in Barrelhouse Magazine, the Black Ladies Brunch Collective’s anthology, Not Without Our Laughter, pluck!, The Affrilachian Journal of Arts & Culture, and other publications.  A Cave Canem Graduate Fellow, Saida has been awarded honors and support for her work by the Watering Hole and Blue Mountain Center, as well as a 2018 Rubys Grant funding travel to Guyana to support the completion of her first full length collection of poems, just let the dead in. 

Her chapbook, STUNT: A Mythical Reimaging of Nellie Jackson, Madam of Natchez, will be published by Neon Hemlock this winter. Pre-sales are available now.  What does it mean to know the interior lives of Black women? STUNT imagines scenes from the life of Nellie Jackson. Born in 1902, Miss Nellie ran a brothel in Natchez, Mississippi for sixty years until her death in 1990. A freedom fighter and entrepreneur who spied on the KKK, and supported civil rights activists, Nellie Jackson is a legend that troubles our notions of Black narratives and histories. By turns jubilant, sensual and violent, STUNT imagines Nellie as a woman who revels in her Blackness, power and creation. 

Saida will be reviewing poetry submissions of chapbook length from October 1 to November 1, 2020, for publication in 2021.