Keisha-Gaye Anderson
I am a Jamaican-born poet, writer, visual artist, and communications and marketing strategist based in Brooklyn, NY. My debut poetry
collection Gathering the Waters (Jamii Publishing 2014) was accepted into the Poets House Library and the National Library of Jamaica. I am the author of two other poetry collections: Everything Is Necessary (Willow Books 2019) and A Spell for Living (Agape 2020), which received the Editors’ Choice recognition for the Numinous Orisons, Luminous Origin Literary Award. The multimedia e-book includes my audio poems set to music and my original artwork. My poetry, fiction, and essays have been widely published in national literary journals, magazines, and anthologies that include Kweli Literary Journal, Small Axe Salon, Interviewing the Caribbean, Renaissance Noire, The Caribbean Writer, The Killens Review of Arts and Letters, Mosaic Literary Magazine, African Voices Magazine, The Langston Hughes Review, Streetnotes: Cross-Cultural Poetics, Caribbean in Transit Arts Journal, The Mom Egg Review, and others. I am a past participant of the VONA Voices and Callaloo writing workshops, a former fellow of the North Country Institute for Writers of Color, and was short-listed for the Small Axe Literary Competition. In 2018, I was selected as a Brooklyn Public Library Artist in Residence and my culminating work for that residency is part of a permanent installation at the Macon Library in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. My visual art has been featured in numerous exhibitions in the tri-state area and in such literary journals as The Adirondack Review, Joint Literary Magazine, MER VOX, Culture Push, and No, Dear Magazine. I began my career as a journalist, having written for national consumer magazines like Psychology Today, Teen People, Black Enterprise, and Honey, and working as a producer or associate producer on documentary programming for networks like CBS, PBS, and NHK (Japanese television). I currently work as a senior communications and marketing director at The Jed Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting emotional health and preventing suicide for our nation's teens and young adults. I regularly teach English courses across The City University of New York and also lead writing workshops for non-profits and other organizations. I am a graduate of the Syracuse University Newhouse School and College of Arts and Sciences and hold an M.F.A. in creative writing from The City College, CUNY.