Samiya Bashir facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Samiya Bashir
Bashir in 2019
Born	Ypsilanti, Michigan
Occupation	Poet, author, professor, multimedia artist
Language	English
Nationality	American
Education	University of California, Berkeley (BA) University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (MFA)
Genre	Poetry
Notable works	Field Theories (2017) Gospel (2009) Where the Apple Falls (2005)
Notable awards	Rome Prize Oregon Book Award Astraea Literary Award Pushcart Prize Hopwood Poetry Award Poet Laureate of the University of California

Samiya A. Bashir is an American artist, poet, and author. She writes poetry that explores important ideas about culture, change, and identity. Her work often looks at these topics through the lens of race, gender, and personal experiences. As of July 2025, she is a visiting professor at Columbia University in New York. Samiya Bashir was the first Black woman to receive the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize in Literature. She was also the third Black woman to be a tenured professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

Before becoming a writer, Bashir moved to Los Angeles and got involved in theater. She later attended the University of California and was named the university's poet laureate in 1994. After leaving California, she worked in magazine publishing and taught high school for a short time. She moved to New York City in 1997 and has since published three full books of poetry.

Who is Samiya Bashir?

Her Early Life and Education

Samiya Bashir was born in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Her mother, Pamela Adelle Hilliard, was an African-American woman from Detroit. Her father, Abdirahman Mohammed Bashir, was a first-generation Somali immigrant. They met at Eastern Michigan University. Samiya is the oldest of six children. She loved writing from a young age. She has said that her parents influenced her academic interests. Her father taught science and math, and her mother taught language arts.

At 19, she moved to Los Angeles. There, she took college classes and explored performance and theater. During this time, she became active in the local LGBT community. She worked for a radio station and then for the Gay & Lesbian Community Services Center during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

Inspired by writers like June Jordan and Toni Morrison, Bashir decided to focus on writing. After the 1992 riots, she moved to the Bay Area. She transferred to the University of California, Berkeley. There, she studied and taught in June Jordan's Poetry for the People program. In 1994, Bashir graduated with high honors from Berkeley. She earned a bachelor's degree in the Literature of American Ethnic Cultures. That same year, she was named poet laureate for all nine campuses of the University of California. She later earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2011.

Her Career as a Writer and Professor

After graduating from Berkeley, Bashir wrote and performed poetry in the Bay Area. In 1995, she helped start The Black Girl Collective. This group was for Black lesbian and bisexual artists. In 1996, Bashir used her winnings from an SF Guardian Poetry Award to move east. She taught briefly at Hot Springs High School in Arkansas. Then, in 1997, she moved to New York City.

Bashir worked as an editor and writer for different publications. These included Ms. Magazine and Black Issues Book Review. She also published poetry, articles, and essays in many other places. Some of these were Poetry, Callaloo, and Essence Magazine.

In 1999, she published her first small book of poems, Wearing Shorts on the First Day of Spring. Her second small book, American Visa, came out in 2001. In 2002, Bashir helped organize Fire & Ink. This was a festival for LGBT writers of African descent. Bashir is also a fellow of Cave Canem. She has served on the boards of groups like the National Black Justice Coalition.

Bashir co-edited a book called Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Art & Literature (2002). She also wrote a critical biography of June Jordan. This was included in Contemporary American Women Poets: An A-to-Z Guide (2003).

Her first full poetry collection, Where the Apple Falls, was published in 2005. This book explored themes of womanhood, femininity, and the cycle of life. In 2006, she published her third small book, Teasing Crow & Other Haiku.

Bashir's second full poetry collection, Gospel, was published in 2009. The structure of Gospel was based on Ghanaian call and response sequences in music. The poems were inspired by Norse mythology and traditional gospel music. Both Where the Apple Falls and Gospel were nominated for Lambda Literary Awards.

From 2011 to 2012, Bashir taught at the University of Michigan. In 2012, she began teaching Creative Writing at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. She is now an associate professor there. In June 2019, Bashir was a guest editor for Poem-a-Day for the Academy of American Poets. From September 2022 to November 2023, Bashir was the executive director of Lambda Literary. This is an organization for LGBTQ+ writers.

What are "Field Theories"?

Bashir's third poetry collection, Field Theories, was published in 2017. This collection features a main series of "coronagraphs." These poems form a crown of sonnets about the legend of John Henry and his wife Polly Ann. The collection mixes ideas about intersectionality (how different parts of a person's identity connect) and other social theories with physics. It especially uses ideas from black body theory and the laws of thermodynamics.

A reviewer for Chicago Review described the book's themes. They wrote that Field Theories explores many kinds of "fields." These include magnetic, gravitational, and electrical fields. But it also looks at America's difficult racial history as a "field." It explores fields of influence and human relationships. Bashir connects these ideas by using physics terms to describe real-life experiences. She also uses details from human life to explain physics. This helps people think about both topics in new ways.

What Influences Samiya Bashir's Work?

Travel and building communities are very important to Bashir's work. For example, she traveled to Ghana in 2013 for research. Bashir has written about many topics. These include social justice, the human body, femininity, public health, and the African diaspora. Most of her work is poetry and memoir.

Awards and Special Recognition

Bashir has been an artist-in-residence at several places. These include the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Soul Mountain Retreat. She was also a James Cody Scholar for the James Dick Foundation for the Arts.

While at Berkeley, Bashir was the poet laureate of the University of California. In 2002, she received the Lesbian Poetry Award from the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. Her poetry collection Where the Apple Falls was nominated for the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry in 2005. Gospel: Poems was nominated for the same award in 2010. Gospel was also nominated for a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.

In 2011, Bashir won the Hopwood Poetry Award and the Helen S. and John Wagner Prize. She also received the 2011 Aquarius Press Legacy Award. This award is given to women writers of color who help other writers. Bashir's long poem "Coronagraphy" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2013. In October 2017, the Regional Arts & Culture Council gave Bashir an Individual Artist Fellowship in Literature. This was to recognize her achievements.

Field Theories won a Stafford/Hall Oregon Book Award in 2018. The main poem from the collection also received a Pushcart Prize in 2019. Bashir was awarded the Rome Prize by the American Academy in Rome in 2019. This was for her multimedia art show called MAPS: a cartography in progress. Bashir was the first Black woman to receive this fellowship in literature. She lived in Rome from 2019 to 2020.

Selected Art Shows and Collaborations

Bashir has been part of many art shows, workshops, and multimedia projects. Her work I Hope This Helps was shown at the American Academy in Rome's Cinque Mostre exhibit in February 2020. She worked with Michael-Thomas Foumai on "Twenty Seventh Night: A Chamber Opera in 8 minutes." This opera first showed at the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

In 2023, her opera, “Cook Shack,” with composer Del’Shawn Taylor, was chosen for the New Works Collective with the Opera Theatre of St. Louis.

Bashir created a multimedia poetry show called Coronagraphy with Tracy Schlapp. She also created Breach (aka Silt, Soot, and ...) with sculptor Alison Saar. These two works were shown together as Hades D.W.P. in 2015. Her work was also part of the exhibition 15 m = ? at the 2017 Time-Based Art Festival in Portland.

In February 2019, Bashir presented The Lushness of Print. This was an exhibition of collaborative poetry broadsides with Letra Chueca Press. The multimedia exhibition MAPS: a cartography in progress was shown at the Hoffman Art Gallery and California Institute of the Arts. This exhibit explored the East African Diaspora through culture and movement.

Bashir also made a series of six video poems based on Field Theories. She worked with artist Roland Dahwen Wu and choreographer Keyon Gaskin on these.

She collaborated with composer Julian Wachner on a choral-orchestral work called Here's The Thing. This work was commissioned to celebrate the appointment of Artistic Director Eugene Rogers for The Washington Chorus.