Episode 122: Reading Nicole Sealey’s The Ferguson Report: an erasure

Commonplace Podcast

Nicole Sealey was born in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, and raised in Apopka, Florida. She received an MFA from New York University and an MLA in Africana studies from the University of South Florida. Sealey is the author of Ordinary Beast (Ecco Press, 2017), which was a finalist for the PEN Open Book and Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards. Her chapbook, The Animal After Whom Other Animals are Named (Northwestern University Press, 2016), was the winner of the 2016 Drinking Gourd Chapbook Prize. In 2019, Sealey was named a 2019–20 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. She has received fellowships and awards from CantoMundo, the Cave Canem Foundation, the American Academy in Rome, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Elizabeth George Foundation, among others.

Books by Nicole Sealey

The Ferguson Report: An Erasure (2023)

Ordinary Beast (2017)

The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named: Poems (Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize) (2016)

Contributions

Best New Poets 2011: 50 Poems from Emerging Writers

Wrote the introduction to Passion by June Jordan

Reel Verse: Poems About the Movies (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series) (2019)

Also Referenced in the Episode

Ross Gay’s A Small Needful Fact

Robin Coste Lewis’s talk on Erasure

Matthew Rohrer

Chase Berggrun’s RED

“Between the Lines” by Arianna Boussard-Reifel

zong by M NourbeSe

Tracy K Smith’s poem “Declaration”

Chase Berggrun’s Red

Reginald Bett’s

Nicole Sealey’s “Clue” and her Cento

The Mis of My Kin by Janet Holmes

John Murillo

Lil Noz X

Charity for this episode: Furious Flower