SHORT BIO:

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Hafizah Augustus Geter is a Nigerian/U.S. writer born in Zaria, Nigeria, and raised in Ohio and South Carolina. She is a 2025 Hawthornden fellow in fiction, a 2024 Civitella Ranieri nonfiction fellow,  a Bread Loaf 2021 Katherine Bakeless nonfiction fellow, and a Cave Canem poetry fellow. Her memoir, The Black Period: On Personhood, Race & Origin (Random House), won the 2023 PEN Open Book Award, and a  2023 Lammy Award in LGBTQ+ Nonfiction from Lambda Literary, and was a New Yorker Magazine Best Book, a Good Morning America Anticipated Book, an Amazon's Best of the Month Editor's Pick, and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize. ​She is the author of the poetry collection Un-American (Wesleyan), nominated for a NAACP Image Award, finalist for the PEN Open Book Award, and longlisted for a Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

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LONG BIO:

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Hafizah Augustus Geter is a Nigerian American poet, writer, and literary agent born in Zaria, Nigeria, and raised in Akron, Ohio, and Columbia, South Carolina. She is a 2025 Hawthornden fellow in fiction, a Civitella Ranieri nonfiction fellow, a 2025 Hawthornden fiction fellow, a Bread Loaf 2021 Katherine Bakeless nonfiction fellow, a VONA/Voices nonfiction fellow, and a Cave Canem poetry fellow. 

 

Her debut memoir, The Black Period: On Personhood, Race & Origin, (Random House, 2022) is winner of the 2023 PEN Open Book Award, winner of a  2023 Lammy Award in LGBTQ+ Nonfiction from Lambda Literary, a New Yorker Magazine Best Book of 2022, a Good Morning America Anticipated Book, an Amazon's Best of the Month Editor's Pick, and a finalist for the 2023 Chautauqua Prize. ​Called "one of 2020's buzziest poets" by Marie Claire, Hafizah is also the author of the debut poetry collection Un-American from Wesleyan University Press (September 2020), received a Starred Review from Publisher's Weekly. It was nominated for a 2021 NAACP Image Award, finalist for the 2021 PEN Open Book Award, and longlisted for the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize. She is a recipient of an Amy Award for poetry from Poets & Writers.

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Hafizah’s writing has appeared in Harper's Bazaar, The New Yorker, Academy of American Poet's Poem-A-Day, The Funambulist, Salon,  BOMB Magazine, The Believer, Paris Review, Longreads, Roxane Gay's GAY Magazine, Yale Review, Tin House, Boston Review, among others. 

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She has taught writing at Columbia College Chicago, FIT, NYU's Writers in New York program, and in the MFA programs at Manhattanville College and Columbia University. She's previously worked at Cave Canem, Poets House, and PEN America, and served on the board of VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts. Hafizah holds a BA in English and economics from Clemson University; an MFA in poetry from Columbia College Chicago; and an MFA in nonfiction from New York University where she was an Axinn Fellow in Creative Narrative Nonfiction.

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Hafizah serves on the Brooklyn Literary Council and as the poetry committee co-chair for the Brooklyn Book Festival. She is a literary agent at Janklow & Nesbit where she represents a diverse range of literary fiction and narrative nonfiction writers. She lives with her wife in Brooklyn, New York.