Erica is the author of three books of poetry: When Rap Spoke Straight to God (Tin House, 2018), winner of the 2018 Florida Book Awards Gold Medal for Poetry; The Small Blades Hurt (Measure Press, 2014), winner of the 2016 Poets’ Prize, and Big-Eyed Afraid (Waywiser Press, 2007), winner of the 2006 Anthony Hecht Prize. Her poems have appeared in Blackbird, The Believer, Virginia Quarterly Review, and other journals. Her poems have appeared in several anthologies, including Best American Poetry 2008, 2012, and 2015, Resistance, Rebellion, Life: 50 Poets Now, and American Society: What Poets See. Her prose has appeared in The Rumpus. She has been featured on PBS Newshour, and in The New York Times Magazine, and O, The Oprah Magazine.
Erica holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University, an MFA from Ohio State University, and a PhD from University of Cincinnati. She’s taught workshops and seminars at the Tin House Workshop, the Florida Literary Arts Coalition’s Other Words Conference, St. Leo University’s Sandhill Writers Retreat, and the DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon. She was an associate professor at the University of Tampa.
She lives in the Baltimore-DC area with her Shih-Tzu, Stella, whom she named after Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, not Tennessee Williams’ Stella or Stella Artois, though Erica really likes Tennessee Williams and Stella Artois.