BlackGirl Mansion
by Angel Nafis

"These are poems that fill the mouth.  They sing sorrow and stitch a family together, then rip it apart again and again.  These are poems that fly, that tell the stories of women, their wounds, their love, their bodies, their deep, hungry song."
- from the foreward of Blackgirl Masion by Tameka Cage Conley, PhD

Featured in:
Buzzfeed "31 Contemporary Poets You Need To Read"
Elle "9 Books to Add to the Modern Brown Girl Literary Canon"
Harriet "12 Black Woman Spoken Word Poets Everyone Should Know"
New York Post "Tales From The 20s"
Muzzle Magazine "30 Under 30"

Angel Nafis is an Ann Arbor, Michigan native and Cave Canem Fellow.  Her work has appeared in numerous publications including  Found Magazine's Requiem for a Paper Bag, The Rattling Wall, GirlSpeak Webzine, and Muzzle Magazine.  In 2011, she represented the Louder-Arts poetry project at both the Women of the World Poetry Slam and the National Poetry Slam.  She is an Urban Word NYC Mentor and the founder, curator, and host of the quarterly Greenlight Bookstore Poetry Slam reading series.  ​

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"Angel Nafis builds a universe on discovery, loss & the secrets, silent terrors, celebrations & sorrows of a BlackGirl in the present, past and future(world)-tense. These poems are “Sturdy and untethered”, they are an invitation to a warm seat, some kool-aid and a smack up-side your head. Free and brazen in form and invention, her ghazals are long-distance runners up-rocking over some horizon. Here are the horrors and the hope to survive and kick-the-ass of the whiteman’s world, to live and love instead anew, in the ALL-together new, vibrant, righteous & necessaryBlackGirl Mansion.- Kevin Coval, author of the forthcoming collection Shtick and chapbook, More Shit Chief Keef Don’t Like."
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"Angel Nafis’ poems swallow blood and witness truth at its deepest roots. Nafis writes, “I count myself among the graced” and you do not doubt the wisdom of her spirit and her craft in BlackGirl Mansion. The poems you will find here climb mountains! They share the glory and pains of survival against and within the narrative of family and womanhood. They fight for the love they are and know. The cadence of her heart is to be celebrated! The poems of Angel Nafis undo gravity with their shine and holler. Listen, for hers is an original and astonishing voice: “I am here now,/speaking and giving/in bursts/of chest, and effort,/and temperature.” - Rachel Eliza Griffiths, author of "Mule & Pear" and "Miracle Arythmia"

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Articles Featuring BlackGirl Mansion

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Other Works By Angel Nafis

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