Yasmine Bolden (they/them) is a poet, educator, researcher, and descendant of Black/Nahiłií women who heard the earth speaking to them through their gardens and lovingly spoke back. They grew up writing against white supremacist mythology on the former plantation lands of United States President George Washington and, after moving north within the unceded ancestral lands of the Piscataway people to study poetry and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University, they performed in and later led the inaugural Rituals of Remembrance honoring the memory and legacies of those enslaved on what is now the university’s undergraduate campus. Recognized by the Congressional Award Program for their research on the Harriet Tubman Byway, they're a 2026 West Trade Review Poetry Prize finalist, a 2026 Purple Ink Press Beloved Chapbook Competition finalist, the 2023 Johns Hopkins Arts & Innovation Rising Star and SAFTA Best of the Net Poet, a 2022 Baltimore Youth Poet Laureate finalist, and they were selected as an inaugural I, Too Am the Dream Grand Prize Awardee in poetry by Angie Thomas and the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream.

They've held fellowships from Writers in Baltimore Schools and the Southern Esesu Endeavor, and they currently work as a teaching artist with Project Poetic Justice. Their poems and research have been published or are forthcoming in the National Library of Medicine, Feminist Center for Creative Work, ONLY POEMS' Best New Poets, Baltimore Beat, Black Earth Institute, Black Feminist Collective, Alocasia: 99 Queer Writers on Plants & Nature, Rootwork Journal, and other text-based literary plots. They've been invited to perform for the University of Benin, the Offing Magazine, Scholastic Art & Writing, the University of Southampton's John Hansard Gallery, The National Museum of African American History & Culture's Young Historians Institute, and beyond. 

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When they’re not writing, they can be found dancing with their beloveds at kickbacks, céilíthe, and powwow potato dance competitions or tending to Linked Hearts, a new poetry reading series co-founded by them and Ruby Rogers to transnationally exploring Queer, Indigenous, and diasporic poetics in service of grassroots mutual aid. You can follow more of their professional journey as a poet, educator, and researcher on Instagram, where they archive their work (and plant children) in detail, @ yasmineboldenpoems . They can be contacted for guest performances, workshops, or general inquiries at seekingjoyandjustice@gmail.com . 

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