The Fire This Time

Poet Jericho Brown has received Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, and Radcliffe Institute fellowships and is an associate professor at Emory University. His poem “The Tradition” begins the anthology. Brown connects fleeting flora with fallen black men such as Michael Brown in this sonnet. The sonnet appears in his poetry collection The Tradition. 

Two-time National Book Award-winner and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Jesmyn Ward conceived of The Fire This Time and edited the anthology. She is an associate professor of English at Tulane University. Her Introduction to the book describes its beginnings in her sorrow over the death of Trayvon Martin. Her personal connection to the work of James Baldwin informs her commitment to offer compassionate literature to others, as he did for her. Her essay “Cracking the Code” sees her coming to terms with her mixed genetic heritage and choosing to see it as a symbol of cultural unity. 

Kima Jones wrote the anthology’s hybrid poem, “Homegoing, AD.” A poet and fiction writer and recipient of fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, PEN Center USA Emerging Voices, Kimbilo Fiction, and Yaddo’s Howard Moss Residency in Poetry, she blends genres to depict a family in the Southern swamp in this piece.