makalani bandele was raised in Louisville, KY, and still resides there. He is an Affrilachian Poet and Cave Canem fellow. He has also received fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, Obsidian Foundation, Kentucky Arts Council, Millay Colony, and Vermont Studio Center. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame with a BA in the Program of Liberal Studies, as well as a graduate of Shaw University with a Master of Divinity in Biblical Studies, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Kentucky. His work has been published in several anthologies, and widely in print and online journals, African-American Review, Killens Review of Arts and Letters, Prairie Schooner, North American Review, and Sou’wester to name a few. Most recently works from his manuscript, (jopappy & the sentence-makers are) eponymous as funk, which won Futurepoem Books’ 2022 Other Futures Award and is slated to be published in 2024, appears in Washington Square Review, Poetry Northwest, The Common, and theHythe. He has two other full-length collections of poems under the aegis of a winged mind, winner of the 2019 Autumn House Press Poetry Prize (Autumn House Press, 2020) and hellfightin’, published by Willow Books/Aquarius Press in 2011.