.CHISARAOKWU. is an Igbo American transdisciplinary poet artist, actor and writer, and a 2023 California Arts Council Artist Fellow. Her work has been honored with awards and fellowships from MacDowell, Cave Canem, Vermont Studio Center, Anaphora Arts, and Headlands Center for the Arts. She is a 2022-graduate of the Brooklyn Poets Mentorship Program, and an alum of the 2022 Tin House Winter Workshop. Nominated for Best of Net (Poetry), Best New Poets (2022), and Best New Small Fiction (2022), her essays and poetry have appeared in academic and literary journals including Transition, PANK, midnight&indigo, and The New England Journal of Medicine. Her debut visual art work is featured in Michigan Quarterly Review’s Spring 2024 issue. She earned her BA in History from Stanford University, MD from Duke University School of Medicine, MSPH from UNC Gilling School of Global Public Health, certification in Global Mental Health & Trauma from Harvard School of Public Health’s Refugee Trauma Program, and is an alum of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program at Yale University.

Recent Accolades

Shortlist, 2024 Evaristo Poetry Prize (formerly Brunel International African Poetry Prize)

Fellow, 2023 Sonia Sanchez Poetry Fellowship (The POETRY Foundation/MacDowell)

Finalist, 2023 Indiana Review 1/2K Poetry Prize 

Finalist, Inaugural Xochi Quetzal BIPOC Artist Residency Award (2023)

Longlist, 2023 Frontier Open Poetry Prize

2022 Writers’ Digest Poetry Award Winner

2022 Best New Poet Nomination

2022 Best Small Fictions Nomination

Sundress Publications’ Best of Net Poetry Nomination (’19, ’20, ’21)