Raena Shirali is the author of two collections of poetry. Published by Black Lawrence Press in October 2022, summonings won the 2021 Hudson Prize and was a long-list finalist for the 2022 Julie Suk Award. summonings was also a da Vinci Eye Book Award finalist and a Foreword Reviews’ 2022 INDIES Prize finalist. This highly anticipated collection investigates ongoing witch hunting practices in India while exploring the possibilities and limitations of docupoetics and persona poetry.
summonings appeared on Small Press Distribution’s April 2023 Poetry Bestsellers List, Academy of American Poets’ 2022 Featured Fall Books List, Lantern Review’s Asian American Companion: Books to Spice Up Your November, Small Press Distribution’s November 2022 Recommendations List, and MS Magazine’s Reads for the Rest of Us: The Best Poetry of the Last Year. Poems from summonings appear in The Penguin Book of Indian Poets and They Rise Like a Wave: An Anthology of Asian American Women Poets.
Shirali’s first book, GILT (YesYes Books, 2017), won the 2018 Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award). An experimental collection grappling with standards created by an invisible system and enforced by family, relationships, and violations of women’s rights in a reckoning of intersectional identity, GILT was named a long-list finalist for the 2017 Julie Suk Award, an August 2017 Small Press Distribution Poetry Bestseller, & was ranked #5 on TRACK//FOUR's list of Ten Most Anticipated Poetry Collections by People of Color in 2017.
Born in Houston, Texas, & raised in Charleston, South Carolina, Raena earned her MFA from The Ohio State University. She has performed at such venues as: Joe’s Pub, the 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center in NYC, Boston Poetry Slam at the Cantab, Slam Free or Die, & many more. From Indiana University's MFA students, to Wright State University's undergraduate creative writers, to College of Charleston's Philosophy Aesthetics Work Group, to high school writers through the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program, Raena has adapted her craft talks & essays for a range of students at differing levels in their artistic educations.
Raena is the former co-organizer of We (Too) Are Philly—an all-POC summer poetry festival—& former Co-Editor-in-Chief for Muzzle Magazine. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Holy Family University, where she serves as Faculty Advisor for Folio Magazine & co-organizes the Distinguished Writers Series. She lives in Philadelphia with her partner & their pit mix.
Photograph by Brooke Marsh, 2022
notable credits
Winner, 2021 Black Lawrence Press Hudson Prize
Finalist, 2021 Cleveland State University Lighthouse Poetry Prize
Finalist, 2021 Switchback Books Gatewood Prize
Recipient, 2021 Scholastic Art & Writing, Alliance for Young Artists & Writers Educator Award
Winner, 2019 PEN America Writer’s Emergency Fund Grant
Finalist, 2019 American Literary Review Poetry Prize
Runner-Up, 2018 Tinderbox Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize, selected by Zeina Hashem Beck
Winner, Fall 2018 VIDA Scholarship for Sundress Academy for the Arts' Fall Residency
Winner, Spring 2017 Philip Roth Residency at Bucknell University's Stadler Center
Winner, 2016 Pushcart Prize
Winner, 2016 Cosmonauts Avenue Poetry Prize, selected by Claudia Rankine
Finalist, 2016 Tupelo Quarterly Poetry Prize, selected by Tracy K. Smith
Finalist, 2015 YesYes Books Pamet River Prize
Semi-Finalist, 2015 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize
Winner, 2014 Gulf Coast Poetry Prize, selected by Rachel Zucker
Finalist, 2014 Ruth Lilly Fellowship
Winner, 2013 “Discovery” / Boston Review Poetry Prize
Winner, 2012 University Fellowship from The Ohio State University