Blood Vinyls (Anhinga Press) is Yolanda J. Franklin’s debut poetry collection that Roxane Gay insists is a “must-must-must read.” A four-time Fulbright Scholar Award Finalist (’20, ’19, ‘18 & ‘17), Franklin is also a Cave Canem and Callaloo Fellow. Her poems appear or are set to appear in Frontier Magazine, Sugar House Review, Southern Humanities Review, and The Langston Hughes Review. Franklin’s poetry also appears in the recent anthology It Was Written: Poetry Inspired by Hip Hop. Also, she is a two-time recipient of the J.M. Shaw Academy of American Poets Award. Franklin is a proud third generation Floridian, born in the state’s capital—Tallahassee. She received a McKnight Dissertation Fellowship and a Kingsbury Writing Award at Florida State University.
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April 4-6, 2025