Kwoya Fagin Maples is a writer, poet and woodworker from Charleston, S.C. She is the author of Long Eye (Hub City Press, 2026) Mend, (University Press of Kentucky, 2018) and co-editor of I Witness: Documentary, Witness, and Research-based Poetics, forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press. Her debut collection, Mend, received a 2019 Hurston/Wright Legacy Finalist Award for Poetry. Mend was also finalist for 2017 AWP Prize for Poetry. Maples is a graduate Cave Canem Fellow. She teaches in the MFA program for Creative Writing at the University of Alabama, home of the Black Warrior Review.