DeLana R.A. Dameron

DéLana R.A. Dameron’s first book of poems How God Ends Us (University of South Carolina Press, 2009) won the 2008 South Carolina Poetry Book Prize as selected by Elizabeth Alexander, and was a finalist for Foreword Magazine’s Book of The Year Award.

Her poetry has been performed across the United States and internationally: DéLana  represented the United States in February 2012 for the Granada International Poetry Festival in Nicaragua, and  in Spring 2011 traveled to Bamberg, Germany to conduct a series of workshops and readings for students and family members of those stationed on base. In the Fall of 2010 she was a featured reader at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark, NJ, and in the Spring of 2010, the Ackland Art Museum commissioned original pieces written in response to a newly-acquired print series, “The Legend of John Brown,” created by Harlem Renaissance Painter Jacob Lawrence. In 2009 she presented her own lecture and reading on “The Art of Risk in Poetry” along with poets Rosanna Warren and Sharon Olds for the South Carolina Poet’s Summit.

DéLana’s poetry has appeared in numerous publications including African American Review, ESSENCE Magazine, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, PMS, Pedestal Magazine and others. Her non-fiction and critical work is widely published, and recently received a Pushcart Nomination. She was a poetry reader for The New Yorker and assistant Poetry Editor for Willow Books, an imprint of Aquarius Press.