Kwoya Fagin Maples is a writer, poet and bookshelf artist from Charleston, S.C. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama and is a graduate Cave Canem Fellow. She is the author of Long Eye (Hub City Press, 2026) and Mend (University Press of Kentucky, 2018) a finalist for the 2019 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry and finalist for the 2019 Housatonic Poetry award. She is also co-editor of I Witness: An anthology of Documentary, Witness and Research Based Poetry forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press, 2027). In addition to a chapbook publication by Finishing Line Press entitled Something of Yours (2010) her work is published in several journals including Poetry, Poem-a-Day, Gulfcoast, Blackbird Literary Journal, Obsidian, The Langston Hughes Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, The African-American Review, Pluck!, Tin House. Her anthology contributions include Cave Canem Anthology XIII, The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood and Chaos, Creativity, Completion: New Approaches to Writing and ADHD.  Mend tells the story of the birth of obstetrics and gynecology in America and the role black enslaved women played in that process. This work received a grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation. Prior to publication, Mend was also the 2017 finalist for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs™ Donald Hall Prize for Poetry.

Maples is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing in the MFA program for Creative Writing at the University of Alabama, home of the Black Warrior Review. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.