Staff WriterAward-winning, Brooklyn-based poet and artist Keisha-Gaye Anderson debuts Everything Is Necessary (Willow Books), her second poetry collection. “Anderson twists to writhe ivory from bone,” says Pulitzer Prize winner Tyehimba Jess of the collection. Anderson is a widely published, multi-genre story teller whose works include poetry, fiction, essays, journalistic writing, screenwriting, and visual art.
Everything Is Necessary is a conversation in free verse that alternates between the subjective, the collective, and the world of the ancestors. These poems assure us that, amidst the vicissitudes of human life, everything is necessary for one to truly manifest his or her highest self in this lifetime.
Praise for Everything Is Necessary:
“[Keisha’s] poetry explores the many ways in which the African Diaspora is carried within our bodies, on our tongues–from sufferings under enslavement to the precarity of modern American life.”
—Patricia Spears Jones, author of A Lucent Fire and winner of the Jackson Poetry Prize
Everything Is Necessary is a ‘controlled explosion’…the poet’s journey is that of meditation, reincarnation, and ancestral lineage inside the portal of her DNA…”
—Anastacia Renée, author of (v.), Forget It, and Answer(Me)
“Keisha-Gaye Anderson takes all the instruments at her disposal—things to make music, things with which to cook, stones that have blocked her way, that have made her at times detour, and fashioned these into weapons, things to keep the enemy at bay…Go with her. She is determined to find a way.”
—Mervyn Taylor, author of Voices Carry
Author Biography:
Keisha-Gaye Anderson is a Jamaican-born poet, writer, visual artist, and media professional based in Brooklyn, NY. Her debut poetry collection Gathering the Waters (Jamii Publishing 2014) was accepted into the Poets House Library and the National Library of Jamaica. Her second poetry collection of 2019, A Spell for Living, received the Editors’ Choice recognition for the Numinous Orisons, Luminous Origin Literary Award, and is forthcoming from Agape Editions as a multimedia e-book, including music and Keisha’s original artwork. Keisha’s poetry, fiction, and essays have been widely published in national literary journals, magazines, and anthologies that include Kweli Literary Journal, Small Axe Salon, Interviewing the Caribbean, Renaissance Noire, The Caribbean Writer, The Killens Review of Arts and Letters, Mosaic Literary Magazine, African Voices Magazine, Streetnotes: Cross Cultural Poetics, Caribbean in Transit Arts Journal, The Mom Egg Review, and others. Keisha is a past participant of the VONA Voices and Callaloo writing workshops, a former fellow of the North Country Institute for Writers of Color, and was short-listed for the Small Axe Literary Competition. In 2018, Keisha was selected as a Brooklyn Public Library Artist in Residence. Her visual art has been featured in exhibitions in the tristate area and in such literary journals as The Adirondack Review, Joint Literary Magazine, and No, Dearmagazine. Keisha began her career as a journalist, having written for national consumer magazines like Psychology Today, Teen People, Black Enterprise, and Honey, and working as a producer or associate producer on documentary programming for networks like CBS, PBS, and NHK (Japanese television). She currently works as a communications director for a large public college in New York City. Keisha regularly teaches English courses across The City University of New York, and also leads writing workshops for non-profits and other organizations. She is a graduate of the Syracuse University Newhouse School and College of Arts and Sciences, and holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from The City College, CUNY.
To book Keisha for a reading, lecture, or interview, or to request a review copy of Everything Is Necessary, please contact Jeaneen Thomas at [email protected].
Facebook: facebook.com/keishagayeanderson
Twitter: @KeishaGaye1
Instagram: @KeishaGayeAnderson
Website: www.keishagaye.ink
Media Writer
