Diary of an Intercessor

Kay Bell's poems in Diary of an Intercessor are hymns, songs, odes and elegies that grace the difficult subjects: tough childhoods, parenting, ancestry, race and class in America. Though the Bible is referenced, the poems create their own biblical tone; casting spells to ward off evil, protect the new generation and confess the truth in fierce and stark vernacular. In the land where Trayvon Martin was murdered, Jacob Lawrence painted the Great Migration and Langston Hughes inspired dreams, this poet is courageous and fearless with language and images to paint the streets and islands of the countries she has lived in and moved through. The call towards home the reader discovers, finally rests in the poems themselves. Bell is a traveller through time, family and ancestry and her poems are a call to follow her on that journey.

-Michelle Valladares, Author of Nortada, the North Wind

Kay Bell earned a BA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing at The City College of New York. She also served as a poetry mentor in the college's Poetry Outreach program. Her work appears in the book, Brown Molasses Sunday: An Anthology of Black Women Writers, The Lily Poetry Review, Moko: Caribbean Arts and Letters, The Write Launch, and other venues. Kay is passionate about bringing the arts back into public schools and issues that affect marginalized communities. She lives in the Bronx and considers herself a bibliophile.