Mission

Lampblack provides monetary relief for Black writers and strives to expand the reach of their work because critical engagement with Black culture is a necessary and radical act.

Our Founding Statement

We are committed to the advancement of Black literature through direct aid, programs for writers and readers of Black literature, and a magazine dedicated to voices from the Black diaspora. The lack of resources in our communities and the erasure of our work from classrooms and bookshelves affect each and every one of us before we put words on a page.

 

WHO WE ARE

  • Tyriek White

    Tyriek White is a University of Mississippi MFA graduate and our community engagement and design specialist, who makes sure that Lampblack’s vision is expressed across all our digital platforms. His first novel, We Are A Haunting, is about a young man in East New York, Brooklyn, who, while mourning the loss of his mother, discovers they share a gift, the ability to see and communicate with those who have passed on. This novel, about making and sustaining community and connection to family, history, and ancestral spirit, will be published with Astra House.

  • Bird Jackson

    Bird Jackson (she / they) is an Afro-gothic writer based in Newark, New Jersey. Their writing blends horror, folklore, and the celebration of Black femmes as they battle gods, monsters, and generational curses. Bird is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Rutgers University-Newark, where they currently teach, and is the Editorial Director of Lampblack literary magazine. She is a returning Anaphora Literary Arts Fellow, and attended the winter and summer residencies in 2023 and 2024.

  • Attorious Renée Augustin

    Attorious Renée Augustin is the host of Lampblack’s Instagram Live Series, “The Inky Bulb” and a nonbinary (they/them), queer, performance poet, filmmaker, and educator from Wanamassa, NJ. Their work focuses on transformation and community, and their hope is for their art to serve as a catalyst in the liberation of all people from oppressive systems. Attorious is an MFA Candidate at Rutgers University- Newark, and an artist-in-residence with New Jersey Preforming Arts Center, where they were co-artistic director of NJPac’s 2022 performance, “Phronesis: A Focus on Frequency.”

  • Thierry Kehou

    Thierry Kehou is a board member at Lampblack and a writer and literary translator from French. He holds a BA in Individualized Study from New York University’s Gallatin School and an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University Newark. His writing has appeared in Departures Magazine, The Huron River Review, Lampblack, and elsewhere. His working translation of Francis Bebey’s Three Little Shoeshiners has received support from the Breadloaf Translators’ Conference and was longlisted for the 2020 John Dryden Translation Competition. His translation of Jean d'Amérique’s debut novel Soleil à coudre will be published by Other Press in 2023.

  • Malek Ngor

    Malek Ngor is a board member at Lampblack and a dedicated writer exploring the refugee diaspora through both fiction and creative nonfiction. A second-generation South Sudanese immigrant, Malek was born and raised in upstate New York, where he is currently pursuing an undergraduate degree in English at Le Moyne College. Though he has yet to publish his work, Malek encourages readers to stay tuned, his voice is one to watch out for. 

  • Lyndon Nichols

    Lyndon Nicholas runs the Direct Aid program at Lampblack and is a Brooklyn-based writer and a 2023 Periplus Fellow with an MFA in Creative Writing from the City College of New York and a BA in English from Northeastern University. His fiction work is upcoming or published by The North American Review, Promethean, PREE, The Dillydoun Review, The Stonecoast Review, and elsewhere. His work was included in the anthology It Was All A Dream: An Anthology of Bad Horror Tropes Done Right released by Hungry Shadow Press. He was the winner of City College of New York’s Stark Short Fiction Prize, a finalist for the Kurt Vonnegut Prize in Speculative Fiction from the North American Review, and a semifinalist for Solstice Review’s 2022 Annual Literary Contest. He is currently working on a collection of short stories which incorporates Trinidadian folklore and carnival characters into works of speculative fiction.

  • Zack Graham

    Zack Graham’s stories have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, BULL, The Cobalt Review, and Volume 1 Brooklyn, and his criticism has appeared in is or forthcoming in The New York Times, The Nation, Rolling Stone, GQ, The Believer, Astra, Jewish Currents, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. He serves on the Advisory Council of Kismet, a new literary magazine offering a fresh perspective on spirituality, religion, and mysticism. He grew up in Chicago and lives in New York City.

  • Eliamani Ismail

    Eliamani Ismail is a fiction editor at Lampblack and a writer and filmmaker from Washington D.C. via Mali and Tanzania. Finding writing in her teens, Eliamani was a youth poet with the DC Youth Slam Team. She has performed at multiple venues including the Kennedy Center and the National Planned Parenthood Festival. After earning a B.A. in Film and Africana from Scripps College in 2020, Eliamani was named a Watson Scholar where she traveled in exploration of how global writing practices create national identity. Eliamani's fiction and poetry can be found in Southern Humanities Review, PRISM, Stonecoast Review, ellipsis..., and elsewhere. She is currently a Creative Writing MFA Candidate in Fiction at The University Of Maryland.

  • Darise JeanBaptiste

    Darise JeanBaptiste is Lampblack’s grants consultant. She supports the Development team and fundraising projects. Darise is a writer born and raised in the Bronx. She earned her MFA from Rutgers-Newark and her MA in English from Brooklyn College. Darise is an alum of VONA, Callaloo, Hurston/Wright, and Tin House workshops. Her writing is featured at Panorama, Electric Literature, Green Mountains Review, and Aster(ix) Journal.ption goes here

  • DéShawn McKeel

    DéShawn McKeel is a poetry editor at Lampblack and a writer/poet/artist born in Georgia & reared in Texas. DéShawn came into creative writing by way of Hip-Hop/Rap. DéShawn likes meatloaf & baked potatoes & gumbo. DéShawn is at work on a poetic-autofiction-photo book memoir, a novel, and developing a theory of AfroAbsurdism. DéShawn received an MFA from Rutgers University – Newark. 

  • Norrell Edwards

    Norrell Edwards is a board member at Lampblack, a scholar, avid reader and sometime extrovert from New Rochelle, New York. She is an Assistant Professor of English and 75th Anniversary Endowed Professor at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York. Norrell has published in several peer-review journals and edited collections as well as essays in Yes!, LA Review of Books, Eletric Literature, The Grio, and more. She is also a board member for the Feminist Press. Find her on X (Twitter) @Norrellexplains.

  • Martina Fouquet

    Martina Fouquet is a board member with Lampblack and a graduate of USC Gould School of Law. She is a member of the Rutgers-Newark MFA class of 2018, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow. She served as a copy editor for the Lampblack Founder’s Issue. She is excited to help promote the stories of Black writers.

  • Simeon Marsalis

    Simeon Marsalis is a board member at Lampblack and a writer from New Rochelle, New York. He earned a BA from the University of Vermont and an MFA in 2019 from Rutgers University-Newark, where he was the Henry Rutgers Fellow and is currently a part-time lecturer. His first novel, As Lie Is to Grin, was published by Catapult in 2017 and was shortlisted by the Center for Fiction for the first novel prize. His short story, “The Exterminator”, appeared in the Lampblack Magazine’s Founders’ Issue.

  • Zeus Sumra

    Zeus Sumra is the host of our Lit Lantern Reading Series. He was born and raised in Saint Lucia, and moved to the United States at the age 17. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Rutgers University—Newark, where he teaches English and creative writing. His work has appeared in the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology and elsewhere.

  • iman cochu

    iman is a Mombasa-born writer and artist who does not believe in borders who works with the operations and Zine team at lampblack. They grew up in Kenya and France and received their MFA from Rutgers-Newark, where they now teach. iman's work explores the relationship between queerness and the divine, border and gender transgressions, and what happens when belief systems and bodies don't translate. They are currently working on two hybrid novels. Some of their writing can be found in Apogee, Lolwe, Kweli Journal, various zines, and elsewhere.