QUEER|ART|PRIZE 2020 RECENT WORK FINALIST

SLINGSHOT (2019) BY CYRÉE JARELLE JOHNSON 

CYRÉE JARELLE JOHNSON 

Cyrée Jarelle Johnson (he/they) is a poet and writer from Piscataway, NJ. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Boston Review, WUSSY, The Wanderer, Vice, Rewire News, The Root, and Nat. Brut among other publications. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University with support from Davis Putter Scholarship Fund.

SLINGSHOT, his first collection of poetry, won a 2020 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry, and is available now from Nightboat Books. Development of the work was supported by Astraea Foundation’s Global Arts Fund, Culture/Strike Climate Change and Environmental Justice Fellowship, and the Rewire News Disabled Writers Fellowship.

Find him on Twitter and Instagram at @cyreejarelle

SLINGSHOT (2019)

SLINGSHOT begins with the author ensconced in the menacing isolation of the pastoral, but once the work migrates to the City, monstrum grows form and fangs. In these messy, horny, desperate poems spun from dream logic, Cyrée Jarelle Johnson considers the consequences of black sexual and gender deviance, as well as the emotional burden of being forced to the rim of society, then punished for what keeps you alive.

SLINGSHOT is available for purchase at Nightboat Books