about mick (she/they)
m. mick powell is a queer Black Cape Verdean femme, a poet, an artist, and the author of the chapbook threesome in the last Toyota Celica (Host Publications, Fall 2023) and chronicle the body (2019). Their poems have been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and a Pushcart Prize and have been published in Split Lip, RHINO, Indiana Review, Muzzle Magazine, and elsewhere.
mick's debut full-length poetry collection, DEAD GIRL CAMEO, is forthcoming from Penguin Random House (One World Books) in Summer 2025!
For their poetry, mick has been awarded a 2023 Tin House Residency, a 2024 fellowship from Torch Literary Arts, a research award from the Barnard Library, writing fellowships from the Hurston/Wright Foundation and the Ruth Stone House, and several other recognitions. Her first chapbook, chronicle the body, won Yemassee Journal's second Annual Chapbook Contest (judged by Aaron Coleman), and was published by the journal in March 2019.
mick's latest chapbook, threesome in the last Toyota Celica won Host Publications Fall 2023 Chapbook Prize and is now available for purchase!
An Assistant Professor in Residence at the University of Connecticut in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and recipient of an AAUP Early Career Teaching Excellence Award, mick's work situates Black queer femme existence and experience as rupture, revolution, revelation, and revival. They also teach in Bay Path University's MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing Program.
mick is represented by Amanda Orozco and Noelle Falcis-Math at
mick is an Aries sun, Leo moon, and Sag rising. She enjoys reading books about Whitney Houston, talking about Aaliyah, roller skating, chasing waterfalls, and being in love. mick lives in a home built in the year 1900 with their wife, Lauren, their dog Nala, and their twin kittens, Audre and June.
Photograph by Larry Choyce