BIOGRAPHY

photo: iman ādam

Kailah Figueroa is a rhetorical engineer, memory archivist, and part-time prose stylist. Her poetry is forthcoming and published in wildness, Poetry Northwest, Black Warrior Review, Torch Literary Arts, Pigeon Pages, The Cincinnati Review, Ploughshares, among others.

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. She was nominated for the Best New Poets 2024 Anthology for her poem “When I Was a Boxer” published in The Cinncinatti Review. In 2024, Figueroa was awarded a 4-week writing residency at Vermont Studio Center where she received the Civil Society Institute Fellowship. In 2025, she was a Just Buffalo Literary Poetry Finalist and was awarded a Cave Canem Fellowship. She received her B.A in Creative Writing from Susquehanna University, and holds a MFA in Poetry from Rutgers University-Newark.

She likes karaoke, fresh flowers, Alice Coltrane, Ethel Cain, playing pool, reading by candle light, and vintage designer shoes. Her biggest wish and dream is for all her friends to live on the same street as her.

Instagram: @kailahfigueroa
She does not have Twitter/X or any other social media.

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