This week, we welcome New York City-based artist Ayesha Raees.
Raees identifies herself as a hybrid creating hybrid art through hybrid forms. Her work strongly revolves around issues of identity, class and race, while possessing a strong agency for accessibility, education and change. Raees cultivates relationships between the word and the image through theatrical performance, filmic visual imagery and documentary photography.
Raees currently serves as an Assistant Poetry Editor at AAWW’s The Margins, and has received fellowships from Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Brooklyn Poets and Kundiman. Her work has been endorsed by Millay Colony for the Arts, University of Findlay, Bennington College, Newburgh Community Photo Project and elsewhere.
Raees’s first book of poetry, “Coining The Wishing Tower” won the Broken River Prize hosted by Platypus Press and judged by Kaveh Akbar, and will be forthcoming in March 2022. Akbar describes her book as:
“Everything I hope to find when I read a book of poetry—fearless reckoning with unprecedented experience spoken in a singular, deeply and importantly strange lyric voice.”
You can see and read more of Ayesha’s work on her website and follow her Instagram page.
