Desiree C. Bailey

Educated at Georgetown University, BA English Literature, 2011; Brown University, MFA Fiction, 2015; New York University, MFA Poetry, 2021.

Desiree C. Bailey is a poet and writer from Trinidad and Tobago, and New York. She is the author of What Noise Against the Cane (Yale University Press) which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry. What Noise Against the Cane was also a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the T.S. Eliot Four Quartets Prize, was longlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and was selected as one of the Best Books of 2021 by the New York Public Library.

Desiree is also the author of the short fiction chapbook In Dirt or Saltwater (O’Clock Press) and has been published in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, American Short Fiction, Callaloo, and the Academy of American Poets, among other journals. She has received fellowships and residencies from Princeton in Africa, the Norman Mailer Center, Kimbilio Fiction, Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Poets House, The Conversation, and the James Merrill House. She is a recipient of the New York State Council on the Arts/New York Foundation for the Arts award and the Poets & Writers’ Amy Award. Desiree was previously the inaugural Writer-in-Residence at Clemson University and joined the faculty at UMass Amherst’s MFA for Poets and Writers as an Assistant Professor in the Fall of 2024.