Marlanda Dekine

Marlanda Dekine is the author of Thresh & Hold (Hub City Press, 2022) and i am from a punch & a kiss (unnamed LLC, 2017). Her work has been anthologized in This is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets, What Things Cost: An Anthology for the People, and Ecological Solidarities: Mobilizing Faith and Justice in an Entangled World. She has received awards and fellowships from the South Carolina Arts Commission, South Carolina Humanities, Castle of our Skins, Tin House, Hub City Press, and the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. Her poems have been set to music by composers, Omar Najmi and Douglas Boyce, sung by Kelley Hollis, performed by counter)induction, and published by Orion Magazine, Oxford American, Southern Cultures, and elsewhere. She is the founder of Speaking Down Barriers. Dekine holds a BA in Psychology from Furman University (2008), an MSW in Social Work from the University of South Carolina (2011), and an MFA in Poetry from Converse University (2024).