Khadijah Queen

It’s been just over a year since this one was published. Looking forward to giving a talk about it at UI Chicago next month!

Split This Rock's red logo is at the top of a light grey box with a black border. Bold black text reads "Writing The Modern Fairy Tale. A Split This Rock Virtual Writing Workshop. Featuring Khadijah Queen." On the right, over aqua and orange shapes, there is a photo of Khadijah Queen wearing glasses, a necklace, and a black v-neck blouse. Wind blows through her silver, curly hair. Photo by Marco Giugliarelli for the Civitella Ranieri Foundation.

Next week!
WRITING THE MODERN FAIRY TALE, a virtual multigenre writing workshop explores an ancient storytelling mode rich with modern possibilities. Led by Khadijah Queen (@khadijahqueen.com) on 2/11, 6:30-8 pm EST. Open to all levels. Take $10 off tickets with code NEWYEARNEWPOEMS: bit.ly/4aF7Gme

“The chorus bears all of it for us”: A Dispatch from Minneapolis - Cleveland Review of Books Whistles and honks and encrypted messages and patrols and training and sit-ins and food drives and carpools.

Please read this powerful essay by Xander Gershberg, who lives in Minneapolis. He is a kind, brilliant soul and, I’m privileged to say, one of my former MFA students.

clereviewofbooks.com/the-chorus-b...

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by Khadijah Queen — Brew & Forge Legacy Lit/Hachette Book Group, 2025. “ Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is a large-hearted, compulsively readable memoir shot through with courage and razor-sharp intelligence. Queen’s ma...

BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA by @khadijahqueen.com: "yet another extension of the brilliant universe of Khadijah Queen." -- Hanif Abdurraqib. Find a signed copy at the Brew&Forge Book Fair through 12/3!

www.brewandforge.com/bookfair/p/b...

Split This Rock's red logo is at the top of a light grey box with a black border. Bold black text reads "Writing The Modern Fairy Tale. A Split This Rock Virtual Writing Workshop. Featuring Khadijah Queen." On the right, over aqua and orange shapes, there is a photo of Khadijah Queen wearing glasses, a necklace, and a black v-neck blouse. Wind blows through her silver, curly hair. Photo by Marco Giugliarelli for the Civitella Ranieri Foundation.

Join Split This Rock for Writing The Modern Fairy Tale, a virtual multi-genre writing workshop exploring an ancient storytelling mode rich with modern possibilities.

Led by Khadijah Queen on 2/11/26, 6:30-8 pm EST. Open to all levels. Register: bit.ly/4aF7Gme

#Poetry @khadijahqueen.com

Sunday morning is a great time to read a poem you’ve never read.

Non-Sequitur – Litmus Press Non-Sequitur presents a chorus of figures and objects carrying on apparently unrelated conversations in a shifting landscape of interiors.

All love to the folks associated with the Leslie Scalapino Award, Litmus Press, and all the amazing performers: Yon Tande, Dawn Saito, David Thomson, Stacey Robinson, Lenora Champagne, Zselyke Tarnai, Helga Davis. Photos by Paula Court. 💜 litmuspress.org/product/non-...

I cannot believe it has been almost 10 years since The Relationship Theater company, brilliantly directed by Fiona Templeton, put on Non-Sequitur, a play that I was told could not be performed. What a whirlwind life has been since then! Sometimes looking back can make you excited to look forward.

Split This Rock’s red logo at the top with the GivingTuesday logo. Bold text below with color alternating between white for headings and purple, blue, green, yellow, and pink for body text. Text reads: “Poetry Workshop Bundle Deal: access to 5 virtual workshops with $120 online donation through GivingTuesday (12/2) while tickets last. Winter 2026 Virtual Poetry Workshop Facilitators: Jorrell Watkins, Kyla-Yến Huỳnh Giffin, Khadijah Queen, Hanif Abdurraqib, Ra Avis. Donate Online: bit.ly/GiveSplitThisRock.”

#GIVINGTUESDAY SPECIAL: Through 12/2 & while tickets last, donate at least $120 online & get tickets to 5 virtual poetry workshops in the new year with Hanif Abdurraqib, @rarasaur.substack.com, Kyla-Yến Huỳnh Giffin, @khadijahqueen.com, & Jorrell Watkins! Learn more: bit.ly/4i3UBEK

On the Verge of Being Obscene, Part 2 Another L.A. epiphany: about food, cars, conflict, and many kinds of love.

open.substack.com/pub/authorkq...

Pink text: On the verge of being obscene, part 2. The text is overlaid. The photo is of a red Corvette stingray parked in front of an apartment building. Khadijah is standing next to it with a hand on the trunk in the back. She’s wearing a red flower dress and has brown skin and curly gray hair.

Song (again): Little Red Corvette by Prince (extended, slowed-down live performance in L.A., 2011) Poem: “Prince Called Me Up on Stage at the Pontiac Silverdome” by me, from I’m So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On It’s been awhile! This is a long one. A few weeks ago, I saw on The Daily Show with Ronny Chieng that the current SECDEF wrote a book called The War on Warriors. I thought about reading it so I could dismantle it, like a gun in Army boot camp, because it’s probably dangerous and made for people who lack the ability to resolve their problems without using violence.

New Substack 💗

Graphic that reads: "The average hourly wage necessary to afford a one-bedroom apartment in the United States is $28.17. The federal minimum wage is currently $7.25." -- National Low Income Housing Coalition

I really appreciate that @pbsnews.org ended the interview with this graphic.

It captures, in the simplest and starkest terms, the brutal arithmetic driving this country's homelessness catastrophe.

How do y’all be posting on here and there AND getting work done? Because I… cannot lol 🫠

Jubi Arriola-Headley reads "Superhero Origin Story [S. O. S.]" It’s Easter morning, & though I hear I’m as likely to catch hell

“I hear that song,
that unending crescendo, feels like I’m the one who’s unbreakable.“

We are deeply saddened by the loss of Jubi Arriola-Headley.

Our condolences to the Miami poetry community and to the many who knew and cared about him.

Quote from Cher reads “if every time men had sex, they risked death, disability, interruption in their education or career, and the lifelong responsibility for another human being, they’d expect a choice in the matter.”

art and literature, theory and philosophy, history and sociology and languages are not "content" and universities do their students a disservice when we pretend they are

Sometimes I say "the poem speaks for itself" and what I really mean is like one of those possessed puppets in a horror film.

Front cover of the book ‘Radical Poetics’ by Khadijah Queen. The cover features a Black woman sitting barefoot in a dimly lit, eclectic space surrounded by books and fabric drapes. The atmosphere is reminiscent of steampunk with a Southern gothic twist. The woman is wearing a pink dress and sitting on a floral patterned surface. The subtitle reads ‘Essays on Literature & Culture.’

“Let’s make room for many modes of survival.”

@khadijahqueen.com’s RADICAL POETICS asks: what would our literary spaces look like if we actually meant this?

Her book challenges us to expand what we consider possible – in our teaching, our writing, our communities.

press.umich.edu/Books/R/Radi...

🎉🎉🎉🎉
Thrilled to have a kind of performance essay in this anthology—thank you Chloe!

You’re invited to my master class on how to finish your book, based on my 25 years of writing experience. For all of that time, I have been working and caregiving and writing at the same time. I love sharing what I’ve learned. Two scholarships are available: www.theshipmanagency.com/classes/mast...

Boys in Zinc ‘I was trying to present a history of feelings, not the history of the war itself.’ Svetlana Alexievich on the USSR and Afghanistan for Granta 34.

From the archive, 1990: Svetlana Alexievich on the USSR and Afghanistan.

‘I was trying to present a history of feelings, not the history of the war itself.’

granta.com/boys-in-zinc/

☀️❤️‍🔥

"Imagine thinking you can truly defeat a people so internally and generationally fortified. Never."

On the verge of being obscene, part 1, A Travel Report authorkqueen.substack.com

A red corvette stingray with black and silver accents, parked on a tree-lined street

A black man with light skin and silver hair and sunglasses, smiling, standing on one foot showing off his Jordans and his silver Porsche 911 cabriolet, in front of a California mountain and blue sky

New Substack: I wrote about a surprise Corvette, a Jesmyn Ward novel, and the spirit of my dad--

authorkqueen.substack.com/p/on-the-ver...

Upcoming opportunity to work with our INFINITE CONSTELLATIONS anthology co-editor @khadijahqueen.com !

( Do you have your copy of INFINITE CONSTELLATIONS? fc2.org/anthologies/... )

Autism formally recognised: 1943

Tylenol invented: 1955

Large Language Muddle | The Editors The AI upheaval is unique in its ability to metabolize any number of dread-inducing transformations. The university is becoming more corporate, more politically oppressive, and all but hostile to the ...

n+1 comes out swinging www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...

We are horrified and saddened by the death of our colleague Hussein Alnajjar who died yesterday in #Gaza.

His death was due to shrapnel injuries caused by an Israeli airstrike near his tent five days earlier.