Anastacia-Reneé

“Using multiple identities and voices, the social world of appearance, judgment, identity and relationship is superimposed against the demands of woman-ness—a critique, a disruption and a declaration of the self. Renee’s interweaving is relentless, and the interwork of prose, poetry, footnotes, dialogic, and declarations, create a new symphonic awareness of how women’s lives are intrinsically bonded to the internal. Some meta-, some stream-of-consciousness, some lyric and narrative, the movements invade the senses and interrupt the intellectual to initiate an atomic space where the elements converge. Reneé words emanate at a high absorption rate that leaves the heart pounding as we release assumptions and give into the simultaneity of understanding and liberation.” —Elmaz Abinader

“Anastacia-Reneé broils the alphabet with accents of Zora and bobby pins and tangled braids; she is busy here melding a blackgirl womansong with a backbeat of black jesus and barbie heads; she is weaving a ghosted blues of cop cars and sparrow eyes; she is translating a language of pain to a semaphore of power. Open these pages… and witness a unique voice that has come into its own” —Tyehimba Jess

“The poems of Anastacia-Reneé synthesize voice and body; prayer and meditation; politics and play; love and sexuality. Even poetic form is synthesized with monologues, glossaries, prose, and fragments.” —Terrance Hayes

Anastacia-Reneé is an award-winning writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, TEDx speaker, playwright, and podcaster. She is the author of the debut fiction-hybrid book, Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere (HarperCollins/Amistad, 2024), and two books of poetry: Side Notes from the Archivist (HarperCollins/Amistad, 2023) and (v.) (Black Ocean, 2017). Side Notes from the Archivist was named one of New York Public Library’s “Best Books of 2023” and The American Library Association’s (RUSA) “Notable Books of 2024.” Reneé has been featured on the PBS NewsHour “Brief-But-Spectacular” series.

Her multi-genre work can be found in Logic(s), Callaloo, Underbelly, Superstition Review, Inkwell, BOMB Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Evergreen, Hobart, Foglifter, Auburn Avenue, Catapult, The Fight and The Fiddle, Alta, Torch, Cascadia Magazine, Bellingham Review, and Ms. Magazine, and her work has been anthologized in The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics and Superhero Poetry, Home is Where You Queer Your Heart, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature, Joy Has A Sound, Nonwhite and Woman: 131 Micro Essays on Being in the World, Spirited Stone: Lessons from Kubota’s Garden, and Seismic: Seattle City of Literature.

As a playwright, Reneé has written and directed Not My Size, 9 Ounces, and Queer Mama Crossroads. Queer Mama Crossroads has been produced by Annex Theater. 9 Ounces has been produced by Hugo House, Gay City, Virago Gallery, Annex Theater, The Alice Gallery, and the Frye Art Museum. She is at work on her first hybrid-libretto, Black Women Gather on the Flight to Mars.

The recipient of the James W. Ray Distinguished Artist Award for Washington artists, Reneé was selected by NBC News as part of the list of “Queer Artist of Color Dominate 2021’s Must See LGBTQ Art Shows” for the installation, (Don’t be Absurd): Alice in Parts, which was exhibited at the Frye Art Museum in 2021. Her mixed media installation work and performance work has also been exhibited at The Center on Contemporary Art’s Storefronts UN(contained), Northwest African American Museum, Virago Gallery, and the Specialist Gallery.

She has received fellowships and residences from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, VONA, The White Center, Mineral School, Ragdale, 4Culture, and The New Orleans Writers Residency.

Short Bio

Anastacia-Reneé is an award-winning writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, TEDx speaker, playwright, and podcaster. She is the author of the debut fiction-hybrid book, Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere, and two books of poetry, Side Notes from the Archivist and (v.). Her mixed media art has been exhibited at the Frye Art Museum and her installation, (Don’t Be Absurd): Alice in Parts, was selected by NBC News as part of the list of “Queer Artist of Color Dominate 2021’s Must See LGBTQ Art Shows.” She has received fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, VONA, The White Center, Mineral School, Ragdale, 4Culture, and The New Orleans Writers Residency. Reneé’s poetry, fiction and nonfiction has been anthologized and published widely.

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Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere

Hybrid, 2024

What if god were a Black woman? What if there were other universes, and in each universe other Black woman gods? One million versions of god, and one million saints to watch over us? And what if this Black woman god was placed here on our earth?

These are just a few of the questions Anastacia-Reneé asks in this daring and mind-bending hybrid collection. A compelling blend of poetry, micro-flash fiction, and sci-fi Afrofuturism with a prose storyline and characters that connect through family, time, and place. Anastacia-Reneé paints world(s) rich with wonder and and the paranormal as she peers into the lives of the everyday people and the spectacular creatures inhabiting not just our neighborhoods, but other dimensions. Hers is a universe of striking variety—monsters, nontraditional saints, witches, zombies, the couple in the apartment next door, the wise elders from down the block, and gods watching over us all—as well as community and connectedness.

Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere is about interstellar ancestry, community and spirituality, about the things we invoke conjure and rely on to maintain our unwavering joy as we move through life. Anastacia-Reneé’s power lies in her spellbinding storytelling—her ability to bring forth lovingly rendered characters captured in powerful brief bursts of lyrical poetry, her ability to build worlds, within worlds and the ways in which she dares us to fully love ourselves and see each other in all our complexity.

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Side Notes from the Archivist

Poetry, 2023

Side Notes from the Archivist is a preservation of Black culture viewed through a feminist lens. The Archivist leads readers through poems that epitomize youthful renditions of a Black girl coming of age in Philadelphia’s pre-funk ’80s; episodic adventures of “the Black Girl” whose life is depicted through the white gaze; and selections of verse evincing affection for self and testimony to the magnificence within Black femme culture at-large.

Every poem in Side Notes elevates and honestly illustrates the buoyancy of Blackness and the calamity of Black lives on earth. In her uniquely embracing and experimental style, Anastacia-Reneé documents these truths as celebrations of diverse subjects, from Solid Gold to halal hotdogs; as homages and reflections on iconic images, from Marsha P. Johnson to Aunt Jemima; and as critiques of systemic oppression forcing some to countdown their last heartbeat.

From internet “Fame” to the toxicity of the white gaze, Side Notes from the Archivist cements Anastacia-Reneé role as a leading light in the womanist movement—an artist whose work is in conversation with advocates of Black culture and thought such as Audre Lorde, Amiri Baraka, and Nikki Giovanni.

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(v.)

Poetry, 2017

“In 1974, when Ntozake Shange first released the cannon of Black girl magic known as For colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf, her opening stanza was a call to all of us.

“somebody/ anybody
sing a black girl’s song
bring her out
to know herself .”

This book is answer to that call.

What is sacred, what is beauty, what is tragedy, what rites of passage have we endured to be initiated into the complexities of our humanity? Anastacia-Reneé’s words frame so many questions, read like ritual, read like nursery rhymes, invoke ancestors and Becky alike in a nuanced honest reflection of this time in life.

Using a reimagined alphabet, Anastacia-Reneé sets about taking on everything from love to cancer, monsters, growing up, growing into our bodies, and the ways in which even our bodies are not our own. Her words define and redefine, explore hidden truths and expose the lies we are raised with.

These poems are stories of blackness, of queerness, of womanhood and the combination of all the identities we hold externally and internally that create the tapestry of who we are and who we want to be.” –Reagan Jackson

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Forget It

Poetry, 2017

“Anastacia Renee’s somber, shrewd and actually detailed romp through a field of landmines definitively shatters both the predictability of genre and the limits of lyric. These fierce vignettes, crafted to confront, are too restless and urgent to behave while considering their impact. Instead, they meld into a story we can’t turn away from, one that—if you need to slap it with a name—could be called poetry. But Forget It (which is all but impossible to forget) isn’t simply poetry. What it is, is simply inevitable.” –Patricia Smith

Anastacia Reneé’s Forget It draws the reader into the churning seas of dissolution — marriage, family, identity, livelihood — in language unknotted from the constraints of punctuation, syntax, sense— “eaten into seedless cherries”—and plunged into the fabular scape/scope of dreams, myth, fairytales, faith, race. Phantom births, ghosts, half-grown children, sex, betrayal, violence, anger, female body, the bloody aftermaths of dissolution sprawling, placental and umbilical, in the urgent, haunted language of dreaming and memory. City and speaker dissolve into one another, boundaries vanquished. What remains after dissolution? Talking to herself. From whence do (k)new form(s) arise? A “revelatory hymn”, matrix upon which self and sense are (re-) configured as her own, Anastacia Reneé’s Forget It dances on the grave of the lost—fiery tempest, a phoenix of language and presence. When we wake up, nothing is forgotten.

Read What’s In Print

• “Retroflect” & “Crest” – BOMB Magazine

• Daughter: A Poem – Alta

• Ms. Muse: Anastacia-Reneé on Poems Living in the Body, What Women Writers Need and Raising a Fist – Ms. Magazine

• “In Case You Forgot, I Am Not Your Negro” (for James Baldwin) – Alta

• Etymologies: The Black Woman *Mainly B’s* – underbelly mag

• Uncovering Truth with Anastacia-Reneé – Off-Kilter

• “Aunt Jemima is the Picture of the American Dream” – Alta

• An accomplished poet expands her multidisciplinary art practice – Black Arts Legacies

• Anastacia Renee’s New Book is a Great Read for National Poetry Month – 9&10 News

• Archiving Black Memory: A conversation with Anastacia-Reneé – Reckon

• Low & Leaving: A Poem – Alta

• Queer artists of color dominate 2021’s must-see LGBTQ art shows – NBC

• Solo Exhibit at the Frye Explores Gentrification of the Black Woman’s Body – South Seattle Emerald

• Interview: Anastasia Reneé – Crab Creek Review

• “Cedar” – Split This Rock

Listen to Audio

• Listen to Anastacia-Renée read her poem “Birdwatching” – Cascadia Field Guide

• Lois P. Jones, William O’Daly, Anastacia-Renee, and Juna Brothers – Poetry & Technology Hour

• “Word on the Street” with Ken Jennings, Anastacia-Renée… – LiveWire Podcast

• What are we so scared of? – NPR

Weigh Yourself Light

I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out of my ears, my eyes, my noseholes—everywhere. Until it’s every breath I breathe. I’m going to go out like a fucking meteor!
—audre lorde

oh (body)
forgive me
for not loving you (more)
(body) a living legend
all strung up in a prom
dress made of glitter
& probability
(body) a living legend
contorted corset
lover of dirty saints
& protein smoothies
could this be why the
heartbeat is off-center
too many directions
going south all at once
(body) gobble your sun salutations
& weigh yourself light

oh (body)
somebody’s baby
forgive me for not
rocking you more
bowed head for all the times
i threw you across
the bed & told you to
shut the fuck up
for all the times i
told you to just take
it like a pronoun & let the
harsh eggshells of voices
seep into your misshapen
yolk forgive me for letting
every narcissist & hello kitty
use your voice box as their
own speaker. i can hear
you now (body) not loud
& clear but tenor.
oh body (boo)
you know i love you
but it is hard to show you
all the time. what is worse
knowing i love you but not
showing it or
not knowing if my love is true.
it is so hard to find truth
in the breast holding bullets
ready to fire out at any time
ready to shoot at anything
that gets in the way of
anything on pause
like remission or forgiveness
or revenge or suspicion.
(body) it is time to count
each scar as a star
if you cannot connect
each of my dots
be the lorde’s meteor
look in the eyes of
my god & repeat my ownyo
name.

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Author, Educator, Interdisciplinary Artist

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