About
Yona Harvey’s poetry books are You Don’t Have to Go to Mars for Love, winner of The Believer Book Award in Poetry, and Hemming the Water, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Her poems have appeared in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, The Best American Poetry, Letters to the Future: Black Women/Radical Writing and A Poet’s Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry. She co-wrote Marvel Comics’ World of Wakanda, a companion series to the bestselling Black Panther comic, and co-wrote Black Panther & the Crew.
Featured Work
You Don't Have to Go to Mars for Love
"You Don’t Have to Go to Mars for Love is writer and poet Yona Harvey’s second full-length collection of poems, following Hemming the Water (Four Way Books, 2013). The book begins with desire in an attic and ends with two women haunting all God’s rivers after Earth’s glaciers melt. Its scale is massive in terms of time and space, yet remains grounded in song, history, and crystalline images. There is only one dominant speaker here, and she has eyes on many scenes: from Charleston, South Carolina to imagined districts in outer space. "
--Maya Marshall, RHINO
Other Works
Awards and Recognition
- 2022 Guggenheim Fellow
