The Bones Beneath

Overview

Sheila Smith McKoy’s The Bones Beneath is a stunning collection that whispers, wails, and yells. In her inescapable incantatory voice, readers are transported to real worlds—from North Carolina to Ghana—and to the imaginary worlds of ever after. This book is a remembrance of departures and returns by a poet who is “the one who would come home.” Smith McKoy summons ancestors and ultimately finds what was lost. These poems are the most brilliant portals. They are “the sun splitting through the blinds.”Jenny Sadre-Orafai

Author Biography

Sheila Smith McKoy, PhD is an award-winning poet, fiction writer, and filmmaker. Dr. Sheila Smith McKoy’s research focuses on the relationships among Africa and African diaspora communities and cultures. A poet, a literary critic, and a fiction writer, she is author or editor of seven books, including her first book When Whites Riot: Writing Race and Violence in American and South African Cultures (2001) and her poetry collection, The Bones Beneath (2024). The recipient of the 2020 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Prize in poetry, she is co-author of One Window’s Light: A Haiku Collection, a collaboration of five Black poets. A trained mediator and university leader, Smith McKoy specializes in restorative justice practices. A native of Raleigh, NC, she lives in the San Francisco Bay area.