Poet, Monica A. Hand - Author of me and Nina

Monica A. Hand is a poet and book artist currently living in Harlem, USA.  Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Aunt Chloe, Black Renaissance Noire, The Sow’s Ear, Drunken Boat, Beyond the Frontier, African-American Poetry for the 21st Century, Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade and elsewhere.  She holds a MFA in Poetry and Poetry in Translation from Drew University, and is a founding member of Poets for Ayiti.  Visit http://alicejamesbooks.org/pages/author.php?authorID=131  for more information.

REVIEWS for me and Nina:
 

"Monica A. Hand's me and Nina is a beautiful book by a soul survivor. In these poems she sings deep songs of violated intimacy and the hard work of repair. The poems are unsentimental, blood-red, and positively true, note for note, like the singing of Nina Simone herself. Hand has written a moving, deeply satisfying, and unforgettable book."

—Elizabeth Alexander

"In me and Nina Monica A. Hand depicts, as Nina Simone did, what it is to be gifted and Black in America. She shifts dynamically through voices and forms homemade, received and re-imagined to conjure the music (and Muses) of art and experience. This is a debut fiercely illuminated by declaration and song."

—Terrance Hayes

“Monica A. Hand sings us a crushed velvet requiem of Nina Simone.  She plumbs Nina’s mysterious bluesline while recounting the scars of her own overcoming.  Hand joins the chorus of shouters like Patricia Smith and Wanda Coleman in this searchlight of a book, bearing her voice like a torch for all we’ve gained and lost in the heat of good song.”

-Tyehimba Jess