Dawn Lundy Martin is a poet, essayist, and conceptual video artist. She is the author of four
books of poems and three chapbooks, including most recently,  Life in a Box is a Pretty Life
(Nightboat Books, 2015) and  Good Stock Strange Blood (Coffee House Press, 2017). She is
currently at work on a memoir. Her nonfiction has appeared in  The New Yorker,  Harper’s, and
other magazines.

Martin is also a co-founder of the Black Took Collective, an experimental performance art/
poetry group of three, and a member of HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN?, a global arts
collective. She has been awarded the 2015 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry and a
2016 Investing in Professional Artists Grant from the Pittsburgh Foundation and the Heinz
Endowments. Martin is Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh and Co-director
of the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics.
 Photograph by Max Freeman.