Best of the Net is an awards-based anthology for diverse writers and the online literary magazines that publish them. They accept work in poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and art. The winners’ stories are collected and published in Sundress Publications. Learn more about the prize here. 

Our Amazing Torch Nominees Include:

Creative Nonfiction

"Before Uses of The Erotic" by Brittany Rogers

Fiction

"You, Your Father" by Tameka Cage Conley

“Strawberry Lake” by Hannah Olabosibe Eko

Poetry

“The Viewing” by Natasha Ria El-Scari

“Ode to the People Who Have Touched the Bottom” by DeShara Suggs-Joe

“Kanifing, Gambia” by Isha Camara

“Crossfade” by NitaJade

“Tornado Sirens When You Have A Sleeping Baby” by Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi

Visual Art

Cindy Elizabeth

###

About Torch Literary Arts

Torch Literary Arts is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established with love and intention in 2006 to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Torch has featured work by Toi Derricotte, Tayari Jones, Sharon Bridgforth, Crystal Wilkinson, Patricia Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Elizabeth Alexander, and others. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, workshops, an annual retreat, and special events. 

Help Torch continue to publish and promote Black women writers by donating today.

About Brittany Rogers

Brittany Rogers is a poet, educator, and lifelong Detroiter. She has work published or forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Apogee, Indiana Review, Four Way Review, Underbelly, Mississippi Review, The Metro Times, “The BreakBeat Poets: Black Girl Magic”, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Lambda Literary, and Oprah Daily. Brittany is a fellow of  VONA, The Watering Hole, Poetry Incubator, and Pink Door Writing Retreat, as well as a 2023 Gilda Snowden Awardee. She is Editor-in-Chief of Muzzle Magazine and co-host of VS Podcast. Her debut collection Good Dress is forthcoming from Tin House Press (October 2024). Learn more about Brittany on her website. 

About Tameka Cage Conley

Tameka Cage Conley, PhD is a graduate of the fiction program of the Iowa Writers' Workshop where she was awarded the Truman Capote Fellowship and the Provost Postgraduate Visiting Writer Fellowship in Fiction. Her work has been published in Ploughshares, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, Callaloo, The African American Review, and elsewhere. She has received writing fellowships from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Cave Canem Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and the Vermont Studio Center. The opera for which she wrote the libretto, A Gathering of Sons, was awarded the Bronze Medal in the Society and Social Issues category of the New York Festivals TV and Film Awards. She is at work on her first novel, You, Your Father--an epic family saga that considers the untimely deaths of African American men and boys over six decades beginning in the early 1940s in northern Louisiana. She is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at the Oxford College of Emory University where her poem, "Among Us," was unveiled and mounted  on the walls of Oxford's Horace J. Johnson Hall.

About Hannah Olabosibe Eko

Hannah Olabosibe Eko is a Nigerian-American eldest daughter who never became a lawyer, doctor, or engineer. Like a true rebel, she attended five years of military school and graduated from the US Merchant Marine Academy, during which she completed a thesis on Black ethnomusicology. After serving in the US Coast Guard, she graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing in Fiction from the University of Pittsburgh. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in Buzzfeed, Bust, b*tch, make/shift, The Los Angeles Press, Pigeon Pages NYC, Fractured Lit, the Dear Black Girl anthology, and Aster(ix) magazines. She is a 2021 California Arts Council Emerging Fellow, a 2019 recipient of the Advancing Black Arts Grant, a Peter R. Taylor Kenyon Fellow, Tin House Scholar, and VONA (Voices Of Our Nations) alum. She is the founder of The Lit Club, an event series and creative community at the intersection of creativity and cannabis, and co-founder alongside Tanya Shirazi-Galvez of Palindrome, a Los Angeles area reading series. Her writing obsessions include girlhood, the African diaspora, Divine Feminine cosmologies, and the surreal. She is currently at work on a coming-of-age novel and seeking representation for her work. Visit her website and follow her on Instagram and Twitter.

About Natasha Ria El-Scari

Natasha Ria El-Scari is a poet, performer, writer, Cave Canem alum, Ragdale Residency recipient and facilitator/educator for over two decades. Her poetry, academic papers, and personal essays have been published in anthologies, literary and online journals.  Born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, Natasha has a BA from Jackson State University and an MA from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. In 2015, Natasha released her first book, Screaming Times (Spartan Press, 2015). Her second book, The Only Other (Main Street Rag, 2016) dives into the taboo voice of the other woman. In 2019 Natasha released her first self-published and non-fiction book in collaboration with her son entitled, Mama Sutra: Love and Lovemaking Advice to My Son.  In 2020, Natasha self-released, I Say, T(He)y Say a chapbook about a special decade in her maternal grandmother’s life. In the same month she released Growing Up Sina, her first novel created after challenging herself creatively to grow outside of her first love, poetry. Her forthcoming work, Steelife, explores her feminist upbringing and the evolution of her womanhood. She recently released Te Deum: Lessons a performative collaboration with a chorale ensemble. Natasha’s CDs, DragonButterFirefly (2006), This is Love…(2010), CuddleComplex (2016), We Found Us (2023) and DVD Live at the Blue Room (2015) establish her as a spoken word artist.. This mother of two adult children and a bonus son is also the founder and curator of Black Space Black Art, an organization created to promote the exhibition of African American visual arts and businesses. She is also the founder and curator of the Natasha Ria Art Gallery, a small powerhouse that focuses on exhibiting marginalized visual artists. Natasha and her musician husband Kevin plan to open a day/overnight urban retreat space for creatives in the future. Follow Natasha on Instagram and Twitter. 

About DeShara Suggs-Joe

DeShara Suggs-Joe is a queer, Black poet and visual artist. She co-founded Daughter’s Tongue (an all-women writing collective), worked as the Creative Director of Workshops at Winter Tangerine, and is a former member of the Youth Speaks Collective. She received her MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts and fellowships from Callaloo, the Poetry Incubator, and Pink Door. In 2021, she received a nomination for "Best of the Net." She has published poems in Apogee Lit, Voicemail Poems, Poet Lore, The Texas Review, and elsewhere. She has also been featured on Button Poetry’s YouTube platform and has performed at the likes of Spotify, Yahoo, and Pinterest. Her debut chapbook is forthcoming from Button Poetry in April 2024. Visit her website and follow her on Instagram.

About Isha Camara

Isha Camara is a Gambian-American poet and visual artist from South Minneapolis, Minnesota. She earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Masters at Randolph College in Creative Writing. Her work has been featured in Palette Poetry, Southeast Review, Muzzle Magazine, Rhino Poetry, and Lumiere Review. She has performed for the Madison Public Library, Walker Art Center, and American Composers Forum. Isha seeks to sate her curiosities by layering myths with modern desires, questions and obsessing over these old stories by polishing them inside poetic forms and digital art. Visit Isha's website and follow her on Instagram and X (Twitter). 

About NitaJade

NitaJade is an Affrilachian Poet and a self-proclaimed weirdo hailing from Asheville, NC. NitaJade earned their B.A. in African and African American Studies from Berea College in 2019. In 2022, they earned their MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from the University of Kentucky. During the 2022-2023 academic year, NitaJade served as the Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Centre College. They joined Emory & Henry's faculty as an Assistant Professor of English and co-director of the annual Appalachian Literary Festival in 2023. NitaJade proudly serves as a Narrative Organizer for the Black Appalachian Coalition and as the Vice President of the Kentucky State Poetry Society. They insist that their late O.G. Queen's sweet potato pie epitomizes love. Ultimately, they aspire to embody the aesthetics of sloths and narwhals (slarwhals, if you please.) They laugh loudly and stubbornly.

About Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi

Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi is a mother who writes beside forests and waters. She fantasizes about living in Anne Spencer’s garden and she strives to write poems that instigate action in service to world-building. Her work is forthcoming or appears in MAYDAY, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Honey Literary, sin cesar, Elysium Review, Rise Up Review, and other portals. She is a fellow of In Surreal Life, Anaphora Writing Residency, and Pink Door Writing Retreat. Her first full-length collection, DREAMS FOR EARTH, is forthcoming from Deep Vellum Publishing. Travel with her at fatimaayanmalikahirsi.com or on Instagram @fatimaayanmalika. She wants you to scream FREE PALESTINE with your whole body.

About Cindy Elizabeth

Cindy Elizabeth is a freelance portrait and documentary photographer based in Atlanta, GA. Her work explores concepts of culture, history, and symbolism in everyday life.  Elizabeth’s work has been exhibited in Los Angeles at SEASONS LA Gallery, and in Austin at The Elisabet Ney Museum, The Art Galleries at Austin Community College, Martha’s Contemporary Gallery, The George Washington Carver Museum, ICOSA Gallery, and the University of Texas at Austin. Client List: Vogue, Bloomberg, Google, The New York Times, The Guardian, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Texas Tribune, GQ Magazine, Equal Justice Initiative. Follow Cindy online at CindyElizabeth.com. 

Media Contact Information:

Brittany Heckard

Communications Associate

bheckard@torchliteraryarts.org 

(512) 641-9251