Duriel E. Harris

Duriel E. Harris, born in Chicago, IL in 1969, is the author of two print collections Drag (2003) and Amnesiac: Poems (2010); as well as Speleology (2011), a video collaboration with artist Scott Rankin. She is a cofounder of the avant garde poetry/performance trio The Black Took Collective and poetry editor for Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora. She has been a MacDowell and Millay Colony fellow and has received grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Cave Canem Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. She is the writer, composer and performer for Thingification: a one-woman show. Her work has appeared in numerous venues, including Mandorla, The & Now Awards, Ploughshares, Troubling the Line, and The Best of Fence; her work has also been translated into Polish, German, and Spanish. Harris earned degrees from Yale University and NYU, and a PhD from the University of Illinois. She is an associate professor of English at Illinois State University where she teaches creative writing, literature and poetics.

As a writer/performer, she is the winner of the Unity IV People of Color Poetry Slam and the Eighth Annual Gwendolyn Brooks Writer's Conference Poetry Slam and the recipient of the 1999 Chicago Bar Association Charles Goodnow Memorial Award for Poetry.. She has been featured at numerous venues in New York and Chicago including: The Knitting Factory, Dixon Place, Corneila St. Cafe, and Columbia University (NY); and Blue Chicago, the South Shore Cultural Center, the Expo for Today's Black Woman, the Chicago Cultural Center, and the Guild Complex (Chicago). In addition to her solo performances, she has produced several collaborative pieces incorporating dance, music and visual art.