Shayla Lawz

Profile Photo

Shayla Lawz is a writer and interdisciplinary artist from Jersey City, NJ. She works at the intersection of text, sound, and performance and has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Jack Jones Literary Arts, The Center for African American Poetry and Poetics (CAAPP), and The Digital Studies Center at Rutgers-Camden. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in Aster(ix), McSweeney’s Quarterly, and The Poetry Project, among others. She lives in Brooklyn, where she teaches in the department of Humanities and Media Studies at Pratt Institute. Her debut poetry collection speculation, n. was chosen by Ilya Kaminsky for the Autumn House Poetry Prize and will be published in Fall 2021.

Stories

Cover Photo: a bridge stretching through and beyond a bright field of stars
Writing Myself Back Into My Body and Into the World

We have the right to imagine what is possible beyond the systems that try to destroy us. Black and queer writers have long imagined worlds beyond this one.

Mar 22, 2021