Tending the Flame

Join us for Tending the Flame: 18 Years of Torch Literary Arts! 

Founded in 2006, Torch Literary Arts has supported and celebrated over 300 emerging and experienced Black women writers worldwide through in-person and virtual programs, including the award-winning digital publication, Torch Magazine. Panelists will discuss how Torch has impacted their lives and work, and the importance of cultivating intentional spaces for Black women writers to grow and thrive. 

Virtual Webinar 

Click here to RSVP on Zoom 

Celebrate Torch's 18th anniversary! 

Suggested $18 donation. Please donate here to support Torch Literary Arts. 

Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the author of a more perfect Union, 2019 winner of The Journal/Charles B.

Wheeler Poetry Prize and Haint, winner of the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry.  She is the 2022 recipient of the Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award and the Poetry Society of America’s 2020 Robert H. Winner Memorial Prize. She has received fellowships and scholarships to Cave Canem, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Hedgebrook, Community of Writers Poetry Workshop, Hermitage Artist Residency, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and more. Her work has appeared in print, online, and in many journals and anthologies including Harvard Review, PANK,  Poetry Ireland Review, and Kenyon Review.  She is the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series Curator and Poetry Programs manager for the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. and shares her home in Maryland with her husband, poet Hayes Davis and their two children.

Sequoia Maner poet, scholar, and Assistant Professor of English at Spelman College. She serves on the Board of Directors for Torch Literary Arts and serves as a mentor for PENAmerica’s Incarcerated Writers Bureau. Sequoia was a National Humanities Center Fellow for the 2023-2024 year where she worked on the forthcoming book In the Mourning Times: A Critical History of Black Elegy in the United States. She is the author of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly (33 1/3 series) and the prize-winning chapbook Little Girl Blue. She is co-editor of the book Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era and her poems, reviews, and essays can be found in venues such as The Langston Hughes Review, Obsidian, Meridians, Auburn Avenue, and elsewhere.

Anastacia-Reneé (She/They) is a queer writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, playwright, former radio host, TEDX speaker, and podcaster. She is the author of (v.) (Gramma/Black Ocean), Forget It (Black Radish); Sidenotes from the Archivist (HarperCollins/Amistad, ), and Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere (HarperCollins/Amistad). Side Notes From The Archivist was selected as one of “NYPL Best Books of 2023,” and, The American Library Associations (RUSA) “Notable Books of 2024.” Anastacia-Reneé is a recipient of the James W. Ray Distinguished Artist Award and, she was selected by NBC News as part of the list of "Queer Artist of Color Dominate 2021's Must See LGBTQ Art Shows," for “(Don’t Be Absurd) Alice in Parts” an installation at the Frye Art Museum. Anastacia-Reneé served as Seattle Civic Poet (2017-1019) during Seattle’s inaugural year of UNESCO status.

Amanda Johnston is a writer, visual artist, and the 2024 Texas Poet Laureate. She has over 20 years of experience in nonprofit management and earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine. She is the author of two chapbooks, GUAP and Lock & Key, and the full-length collection Another Way to Say Enter. Her work has appeared in numerous online and print publications, among them, Callaloo, Poetry Magazine, The Moth, Puerto del Sol, Muzzle, and the anthologies, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry and Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism. She has received fellowships, grants, and awards from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, Tasajillo, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Watermill Center, and American Short Fiction, and she is a 2024 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. She is a former Board President of Cave Canem Foundation, a member of the Affrilachian Poets, cofounder of Black Poets Speak Out, and founder of Torch Literary Arts.

Torch Literary Arts is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by emerging and experienced writers alike. Programs include the Torch Wildfire Reading Series, creative writing and professional development workshops, retreats, and special events.