NICOLE SESSIONS

Alafia Nicole Sessions is a black poet and mother living in Atlanta. She currently works as an educator, actress, herbalist and birthworker. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in POETRY, Obsidian, Ploughshares, Poem-a-Day, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cincinnati Review, Ecopoetry Anthology, Southern Humanities Review, Indiana Review, Los Angeles Review, Poetry Daily and elsewhere. Alafia is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Sustainable Arts Foundation, Yaddo and The Watering Hole. The 2025 winner of Georgia Writers' John Lewis Writing Grant, Alafia was selected by Evie Shockley as the winner of the 2023 Furious Flower Prize. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and twice nominated for Best New Poets. Alafia also received the Howard Moss Residency in Poetry. Her debut manuscript, Nine Drops of Turpentine, was selected as a finalist for the 2025 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize and a semi-finalist for Persea Books’ Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize.