Urbanshee (Button Poetry)

2023 IPPY Awards - Poetry Gold
2023 IBPA Awards - Poetry Silver
2023 Publishing Triangle Awards Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry - Finalist

Urbanshee is Siaara Freeman's retelling of fairy tales and mythological stories through a modern and urban lens. This collection discusses the weight of being Black in America, Freeman's relationships to lovers and family, and how the physical place you grew up can become part of your identity. Urbanshee expertly combines humor, fantasy, and raw emotion to create this astonishing reinvention of classic fables. Freeman's poems are ventrously unique and are sure to enchant anyone who reads them.

Siaara Freeman is from Cleveland Ohio, where she is the current Lake Erie Siren & a teaching artist for Center For Arts Inspired Learning and The Sisterhood Project in conjunction with the Anisfieldwolf Foundation. She is a 2021 Premier Playwright fellow recipient with Cleveland Public theater. She is a 2020 WateringHole Manuscript fellow, a 2018 winter tangerine chapbook fellow and a 2018 Poetry Foundation incubator fellow. She is the co-founder of Outsiders Queer Midwest Writers Retreat. Her work appears in The Offing, BOAAT, Tinderbox, Josephine Quarterly and elsewhere.