The Writer’s Block: A Q&A with Yona Harvey

Yona Harvey is a widely published literary artist and professor at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of Hemming the Water, and winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award from Claremont Graduate University. She was a resident at the inaugural Cave Canem retreat at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Her work explores the experiences of Black American women and spans genres of poetry, personal essay, and most recently, comic. In 2016 she was selected, along with Roxane Gay, to author the World of Wakanda series. The two are the first Black women ever to write for Marvel Comics.

In this Writer’s Block interview, Harvey discusses her revision process, the way her poetry informs her work in writing comics, and the changes in campus conversations that she has observed in the creative writing classroom.