about

Affrilachian Poet and Cave Canem Fellow, Bianca Spriggs, is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Lexington, Kentucky. Currently a doctoral student at the University of Kentucky, she holds degrees from Transylvania University and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Named as one of the Top 30 Performance Poets by TheRoot.com, Bianca is the recipient of a 2013 Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship in Poetry, multiple Artist Enrichment and Arts Meets Activism grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and a Pushcart Prize Nominee. In partnership with the Kentucky Domestic Violence Association, she is the creator of "The SwallowTale Project" a traveling creative writing workshop designed for incarcerated women, and the creator and Artistic Director of the Gypsy Poetry Slam featured annually at the Kentucky Women Writers Conference. 

Pushcart Prize winner and National Book Award Finalist, Patricia Smith, calls Bianca’s work, “an aggressive signature that is deftly crafted, insightful and often achingly lyrical.”  Heralded as “the new standard bearer for the Affrilachian Poets” by founding member, Frank X Walker, Bianca Spriggs is the author of Kaffir Lily (Wind Publications), How Swallowtails Become Dragons (Accents Publishing), and her work may also be found in the anthologies, New Growth: Recent Kentucky Writings, America! What's My Name? and the journals, Union Station Magazine, Tidal Basin Review, Muzzle, Caduceus, Alehouse, Reverie, Appalachian Heritage Magazine, and others. Bianca has served on the editorial board for ninepatch, TORCH: poetry, prose, and short stories by African American Women, and is currently the Managing Editor for pluck! The Affrilachian Journal of Art and Culture.
This website will be frequently updated. Please check in for news, workshops, performance dates, and more!

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