photo by Alexa Rene’ Rivera, 2024Kailah Figueroa is a rhetorical engineer, memory archivist, and part-time prose stylist. Her
writing is featured in Poetry Northwest, Black
Warrior Review, Torch Literary Arts, The Cincinnati Review, Pigeon Pages, Prose Online, among others, with work forthcoming in Wildness and Ploughshares in 2025.
Figueroa was a 2021 recipient of the Fulbright UK Summer Institute at the University of Bristol: Arts, Activism, and Social Justice. And in 2023, she was a Pushcart Prize nominee for her poem “After My Bipolar Diagnosis I Make Several Phone Calls and Everyone Says That Makes Sense” published in Torch Literary Arts. In 2024, Figueroa was awarded a 4-week writing residency at Vermont Studio Center where she received the Civil Society Institute Fellowship, a prestigious award bestowed upon an individual who demonstrates exceptional creative talent and a commitment to their artistic practice.
Born in Manhattan, New York, and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, Figueroa has studied at American College of the Mediterranean (ACM-IAU), the University of Bristol, and Susquehanna University where she received her B.A in Creative Writing. In 2019, she founded Mid-heaven Magazine, an online zine dedicated for weird and sad girl art & writing. She is a Poetry MFA candidate at Rutgers-Newark '25 where she also teaches. She is currently working on her debut poetry collection and novel.
She likes karaoke, fresh flowers, Alice Coltrane, Ethel Cain, playing pool, reading by candle light, and vintage designer shoes. You can see more of her on Instagram @kailahfigueroa or on her Substack newsletter, The Saddest Girl in ______
Figueroa was a 2021 recipient of the Fulbright UK Summer Institute at the University of Bristol: Arts, Activism, and Social Justice. And in 2023, she was a Pushcart Prize nominee for her poem “After My Bipolar Diagnosis I Make Several Phone Calls and Everyone Says That Makes Sense” published in Torch Literary Arts. In 2024, Figueroa was awarded a 4-week writing residency at Vermont Studio Center where she received the Civil Society Institute Fellowship, a prestigious award bestowed upon an individual who demonstrates exceptional creative talent and a commitment to their artistic practice.
Born in Manhattan, New York, and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, Figueroa has studied at American College of the Mediterranean (ACM-IAU), the University of Bristol, and Susquehanna University where she received her B.A in Creative Writing. In 2019, she founded Mid-heaven Magazine, an online zine dedicated for weird and sad girl art & writing. She is a Poetry MFA candidate at Rutgers-Newark '25 where she also teaches. She is currently working on her debut poetry collection and novel.
She likes karaoke, fresh flowers, Alice Coltrane, Ethel Cain, playing pool, reading by candle light, and vintage designer shoes. You can see more of her on Instagram @kailahfigueroa or on her Substack newsletter, The Saddest Girl in ______