Khadijah Queen

Khadijah Queen
Born1975 (age 50–51)
Wayne, Michigan, U.S.
EducationAntioch University (MFA)[1]
University of Denver (PhD)[2]
OccupationPoet
Notable workAnodyne
I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On
AwardsWilliam Carlos Williams Award (2021)

Khadijah Queen (born 1975) is an American poet. She is the author of several poetry collections, including Anodyne (2020), which won the William Carlos Williams Award, I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On (2017), and the memoir Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (2025).[3][4]

Early life and education

Queen was born in Wayne, Michigan, in 1975, and grew up primarily in Los Angeles, California.[5] In a 2025 interview with The Offing, she said that her mother's family had migrated to Michigan from Alabama in the 1920s after her great-grandfather was lynched.[6]

A Kirkus Reviews review of her memoir Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea states that her family later moved back from LA to Michigan;[7] soon after, Queen joined the U.S. Navy in 1998 at age 22.[8] She later earned a PhD in English and Literary Arts from the University of Denver.[2]

Career

Queen is the author of the full-length poetry collections Conduit (2008), Black Peculiar (2011), Fearful Beloved (2015), I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On (2017), and Anodyne (2020).[3] Her 2015 book Non-Sequitur is a verse play; it won the Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women's Performance Writing in 2014 and was later produced in New York City in 2015.[2]

In The New Yorker, Hanif Abdurraqib called I'm So Fine "an investigation of celebrity culture and toxic masculinity that moves at a lyrical sprint".[9]

Fearful Beloved was reviewed in Kenyon Review by Abby Minor, who discussed its themes of violence, healing, and survival.[10]

In 2021, Anodyne won the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. In a review for Harvard Review, Hanna Andrews called the collection "riveting" and described it as concerned with "apocalypse and beauty; suffering and persistence; love and its attendant exhaustion".[4][11]

In 2025, Queen received the Cy Twombly Award for Poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.[12]

Her memoir Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea was published by Legacy Lit in 2025.[13] Asked in a 2026 interview with WKAR how her experiences shaped her as a writer, including a Navy boot-camp episode described in the memoir in which she lost her security clearance, Queen connected such experiences to her commitment to speaking openly and telling “authentic stories.”[14]

Bibliography

Poetry

Plays

  • Non-Sequitur (2015, Litmus Press)[21][22]

Memoir

References

  1. ^ "Khadijah Queen '06". Antioch University. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  2. ^ a b c "Khadijah Queen". Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  3. ^ a b "Khadijah Queen". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  4. ^ a b "William Carlos Williams Award – 2021". Poetry Society of America. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  5. ^ "Khadijah Queen". Milkweed Editions. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  6. ^ Jackson, Ashaki M. (September 5, 2025). "Q&A with Khadijah Queen, author of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea". The Offing. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  7. ^ a b "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea". Kirkus Reviews. May 30, 2025. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  8. ^ "Khadijah Queen". Kore Press Institute. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  9. ^ Abdurraqib, Hanif (November 16, 2017). "In "I'm So Fine," Khadijah Queen Casts Her Eye on Toxic Masculinity and Celebrity Culture". The New Yorker. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  10. ^ Minor, Abby. ""Blind the Way a Dark-Adapted Animal is Blind": On Fearful Beloved by Khadijah Queen". Kenyon Review. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  11. ^ Andrews, Hanna. "Anodyne". Harvard Review. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  12. ^ "Grant Recipients". Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  13. ^ a b "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea". Hachette Book Group. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  14. ^ Begay, Melorie (February 19, 2026). "From Michigan to the Navy: Author Khadijah Queen's memoir tells story of persistence and identity". WKAR Public Media. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  15. ^ "Conduit". Akashic Books. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  16. ^ Dixon, Athena. "Review–Conduit: Poems by Khadijah Queen". Mosaic Magazine. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  17. ^ "Black Peculiar". Noemi Press. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  18. ^ "Fearful Beloved". Argos Books. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  19. ^ "I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On". YesYes Books. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  20. ^ "Anodyne". Tin House. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  21. ^ "Non-Sequitur". Litmus Press. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  22. ^ Puro, Nina. "Culture Shifts & Switches in Khadijah Queen's New Play, Non-Sequitur". Weird Sister. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  23. ^ "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: A Veteran's Memoir". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  24. ^ Schlichenmeyer, Terri (August 13, 2025). "BOOK REVIEW: 'Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: A Veteran's Memoir' by Khadijah Queen". The Washington Informer. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.