Taylor Byas

Dr. Taylor Byas, Ph.D. is a Black poet and essayist. Originally from Chicago, she moved to Alabama for six years, where she received both her Bachelor’s degree in English and her Master’s degree in English (Creative Writing concentration) from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Taylor currently lives in Cincinnati. She is also an Assistant Features Editor for The Rumpus, a Poetry Acquisitions Editor for Variant Literature, an Editorial Board Member for Beloit Poetry Journal, and a Poetry Instructor for Frontier Poetry’s inaugural Pocket MFA. She has received five Pushcart and six Best of the Net nominations, and has won a Best Microfiction Award. She is also the 1st Place Winner of the 2020 Poetry Super Highway Contest, the 2020 Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets, the 2021 Adrienne Rich Poetry Award, a finalist for the 2020 Frontier OPEN Prize, and an Honorable Mention for the 2021 Ninth Letter Literary Award in Poetry. Her chapbook, Bloodwarm, is out now from Variant Lit (2021). Her second chapbook, Shutter, is out from Madhouse Press (2022). Her debut full-length poetry collection, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, is forthcoming from Soft Skull Press in August 2023. She is also a coeditor of The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol X: Alabama, forthcoming from Texas Review Press, and Poemhood: Our Black Revival a YA anthology surrounding Black folklore forthcoming from HarperCollins. She is represented by Rena Rossner of The Deborah Harris Agency.