RACHEL ELIZA GRIFFITHS is a poet, visual artist, and novelist. She is the author of several poetry collections, including Miracle Arrhythmia, The Requited Distance, and Mule & Pear, which won the 2012 Inaugural Poetry Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Her fourth collection of poetry, Lighting the Shadow, was selected as a finalist for the 2015 Balcones Poetry Prize and the 2016 Phillis Wheatley Book Award in Poetry. Her collection, Seeing the Body, won the 2021 Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award and the Paterson Poetry Prize. Kirkus Reviews described Griffiths’ debut novel Promise as “a stunning and evocative portrait of love, pride, and survival.” She is widely known for her literary portraits, fine art photography, and lyric videos. Griffiths earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and has received numerous fellowships, including the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and the Cave Canem Foundation.

WHY THEY’RE JOINING US

The rare artist is accomplished in different genres and different media. Poet, photographer, and visual artist Rachel Eliza Griffiths is one of those artists. Now she has added the title of novelist with Promise, a beautiful debut about two young Black sisters in 1950s Maine and about how racism and discrimination reached into the small towns of America, distorting lives and dreams. The book has that rare ability to blend big national themes with the vivid, tender details of intimate lives.

Photo credit – Beowulf Sheehan