M. Nzadi Keita

About Nzadi

M. Nzadi Keita is a first-generation urban northerner. Her first book of poems, Birthmarks, was published by Nightshade Press. Her work has since appeared on public television, and in anthologies including Bum Rush The Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Beyond the Frontier: African-American Poetry in the 21st Century, and A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry. Her poems appear in MELUS, Poet Lore, and Crab Orchard, among other journals. Grants and fellowships from Yaddo, Fine Arts Work Center, Leeway Foundation, and the Pew Center for Arts and Humanities have supported her writing and community-based arts adventures.  

Keita served as an adviser to the documentary, “BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez.” Her essays on Sanchez appear in Impossible to Hold: Women and Culture in The 1960s and the anthology, Peace Is A Haiku Song (Mural Arts Press).  

 She has collaborated with the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, WHYY-TV/ Philadelphia, the Rosenbach Museum, Moonstone Arts Center, Germantown Arts Roundtable, and other initiatives. Keita is a Cave Canem alum and a professor of creative writing and literature at Ursinus College.