francine j. harris

francine j. harris was born in Detroit. She earned a BA in English from Arizona State University and an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan.

harris is the author of Here is the Sweet Hand (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry; play dead (Alice James Books, 2016), which was the winner of a 2017 Lambda Literary Award and the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry and was a finalist for the 2017 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and allegiance (Wayne State University Press, 2012), which was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the PEN Open Book Award.

harris has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers and Cave Canem. She has served as writer in residence at Washington University in St. Louis and is currently Professor of English at the University of Houston, serving also as consulting faculty editor at Gulf Coast.