Upfromsumdirt

upfromsumdirt is a.poet and award-winning artist whose works have galleried in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, and Tennessee. As a graphic designer he has created covers for Crystal Wilkinson’s Ernest J. Gaines Award-winning novel, The Birds of Opulence; her short story collections, Blackberries, Blackberries and Water Street, and her NAACP Award-winning poetry collection, Perfect Black (as well as providing interior artwork for that collection). Most recently, he has collaborated with Affrilachian Poet, Frank X Walker, providing the artwork for the cover and interior of their picture book, A Is For Affrilachia. dirt has also designed covers for Ricardo Nazario y Colon, Makalani Bandele, Bernard Clay, Keith Gilyard, Jude McPherson, African American Review, Tidal Basin Review, and many others; he is a 2010 Kentucky Al Smith Award winner for visual art.

In literature, upfromsumdirt is the author of the genre-fluid art & poetry book, Caul & Response (Argus House, 2015), the chapbooks, Tangerine Tubman (Left Handed Juju, 2016), Chiaroscuro Vitae, and The Time Unraveller’s Travel Journal (both with Radical Paper Press, 2019) and his full-length collections.include Deifying A Total Darkness (Harry Tankoos Books, 2020), To Emit Teal (Broadstone Books, 2020), and The Second Stop Is Jupiter (Wayne State University Press, 2023). and in 2022, upfromsumdirt was inducted into the renowned collective of writers, The Affrilachian Poets.

his handle is upfromsumdirt or upfromsumdirt 1 on all social media platforms.