Lauren Russell is the author of What’s Hanging on the Hush (Ahsahta, 2017) an Descent (Tarpaulin Sky, 2020). A 2017 NEA Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry, she has received fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, The Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, VIDA/The Home School, the Rose O’Neill Literary House, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and City of Asylum. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, boundary 2, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, The Brooklyn Rail, jubilat,Cream City Review, and Bettering American Poetry 2015, among others. She is a research assistant professor and is assistant director of the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics at the University of Pittsburgh and regularly facilitates writing workshops on an inpatient behavioral health unit at Pittsburgh’s VA hospital.