Poetry Consultations with Arisa White

Arisa White is a Cave Canem fellow, Sarah Lawrence College alumna, an MFA graduate from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and author of the poetry chapbooks Disposition for Shininess, Post Pardon, Black Pearl, Perfect on Accident, and “Fish Walking” & Other Bedtime Stories for My Wife, which won the inaugural Per Diem Poetry Prize.

Published by Virtual Artists Collective, her debut full-length collection, Hurrah’s Nest, was a finalist for the 2013 Wheatley Book Awards and 82nd California Book Awards and was nominated for the 44th NAACP Image Awards. Her second collection, A Penny Saved, inspired by the true-life story of Polly Mitchell, was published by Willow Books, an imprint of Aquarius Press, in 2012. You’re the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened, published by Augury Books, was nominated for the 29th Lambda Literary Awards.

Her current publications include the poetic memoir Who’s Your Daddy and the anthology Home is Where You Queer Your Heart, co-edited with Miah Jeffra and Monique Mero, published by Foglifter Press. Forthcoming from Airlie Press in March 2027 is her fifth full-length poetry collection, A Trusted Spectacle in a World of Incomplete Sunshine.

Arisa is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Colby College, a member of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance’s community advisory board, and a certified Kundalini Yoga instructor.

Arisa will provide detailed comments on your manuscript as well as a cover letter. After receiving these files, participants who submit chapbooks and full-length manuscripts may also book phone/video conferences with them at no additional charge.

Arisa is accepting single poems, folios, chapbooks, and full-length collections for critique. The fees and parameters for each of these categories are as follows: