Bio:
Cameron Awkward-Rich is Black trans poet who received his PhD in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University in 2017. Prior to that, Cam spent his time as a postdoctoral associate in transgender studies at the Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University. He has roots in the Pioneer Valley as an assistant professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Amherst Massachusetts. He is a poetry editor for Muzzle Magazine; in addition to being a poet, Cam is working on a manuscript about the creation of what we consider to be canonical transgender works and the “bad” feelings that can come along with that.
In terms of his poetry, Cameron published his first chapbook Transit through Button Poetry in 2015. Some of those poems and similar poetics were later featured in his full-length poetry book Sympathetic Little Monster, published with Ricochet Editions in 2016. It’s about reconciling one’s past experiences with notions of girlhood and the narrator’s relationship to his father, with his actualized identity as a young Black man in the present. There are allusions to non self-imposed conflict between the narrator’s identity as a Black person and a trans man within some of this poetry; in a world that expects Black men to be loud and aggressive, Cam’s poetry alludes to how transmasculine Black folks are able to strive towards a space of existence in which they are comfortable being otherwise. The writer of this bio had the pleasure of meeting Cam once; to paraphrase his words, “Transitioning was a way for me to move more comfortably into quietness, as opposed to taking up more space.”
Cameron Awkward-Rich’s poetry is a tender gut-punch. The writer of this short biography recommends it to all who love poetry, but especially trans and questioning Black people/folks of color. Fans of Cam’s poetry can look forward to his next collection of poems to be published with Persea Books in 2019, a piece of work called Dispatch and winner of the 2018 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award.
Helpful Links:
Cameron Awkward-Rich’s website
Suggested Readings:
Transit
Sympathetic Little Monster
Dispatch (forthcoming)
“The Child Formerly Known As _____”
“Cento Between the Ending and the End”