Meilani Clay is a writer, mama, and educator from Oakland, CA. Her work has appeared in Nomadic Press’s Patrice Lumumba: An Anthology of Writers on Black Liberation, and online literary journal The Ana. Her debut poetry collection, and the creek don’t rise, was the winner of the 2021 Michael Rubin Book Award from San Francisco State University’s Fourteen Hills Press. A graduate of Howard University, the University of San Francisco’s Urban Education and Social Justice program, and a current MFA Poetry candidate at SFSU, Meilani aspires to be in school forever. She seeks to bridge worlds with her words and to one day build forts out of books written by Black folks.