Valencia Robin’s first collection of poems, Ridiculous Light, won Persea Books’ 2018 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize.  A visual artist as well as a poet, her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in the New York Times, TriQuarterly, Foundry, the St. Petersburg Review, Black Renaissance Noire, Kweli, The Cortland Review and elsewhere.  Says The New York Times, “The narrative lyrics in this debut collection travel from intimate to socio-historical and back again, finding room for routine wonders.” Says the San Francisco Chronicle: “These are praise poems for a dark time, musical poems that conjure up stories, transcendent poems to give to your mother, your lover, your friends, yourself.” A Cave Canem Fellow, Valencia Robin holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Virginia and an MFA in Art & Design from the University of Michigan. She currently lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. For more information, please see: valenciarobin.com.