Artist's Statement

"I have lived many lives, I often say, and that is true of all my work. My books, my poems, my prose, express aspects of my background, geographies, histories, cultures, religions, mythologies, cuisines, and are journeys in time and space. Drawing deeply from my life in India, my Bene Israel (Indian Jewish) roots, my experiences in the US, immigration and displacement, racism and colonialism, death and loss, Nature, birds and animals, each book focuses on different, and yet related themes, weaving complex tapestries with imagery and fragmented as well as linear narratives. In this audio collection, I read poems from several books to create a medley and offer a wider perspective on my life’s work. " - Zilka Joseph



About the Poet

Zilka Joseph's work is influenced by Indian and Western cultures and by her Bene Israel roots. She was awarded a Zell Fellowship (MFA program) and the Elsie Choy Lee Scholarship (Centre for the Education of Women) from the University of Michigan. She has received many award nominations, honors, participated in literary festivals and readings, and has been featured on several radio programs and online interviews. Her work has appeared in POETRY, Poetry Daily, The Writers’ Chronicle, Frontier Poetry, Kenyon Review Online, Michigan Quarterly Review, Asia Literary Review, Cha, Poetry at Sangam, Pratik, The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Review Americana, Gastronomica, and in anthologies such as Cheers To Muses: Contemporary Works by Asian American Women, Uncommon Core, RESPECT: The Poetry of Detroit Music, Matwaala Anthology of Poets from South Asia (which she co-edited), 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium and The Kali Project. Her chapbooks, Lands I Live In and What Dread, were nominated for a PEN America Beyond Borders and a Pushcart award respectively. Sharp Blue Search of Flame, her book of poems published by Wayne State University Press was a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Book Award. Her third chapbook Sparrows and Dust won a Best Indie Book Award and has been nominated for a Pushcart. In Our Beautiful Bones, her next book was a Foreword INDIES Book Award finalist, and nominated for a Pushcart, A PEN, Griffin, and the National Book Award. Her new book, Sweet Malida: Memories of a Bene Israel Woman, about the history and legends of the Bene Israel Jews of India, food, culture, and childhood memories, was published by Mayapple Press, in February, 2024. An international edition of the book will be published by Pippa Rann Books and Penguin Random House in late 2024. (See Books page for reviews, interviews etc.)



She was born in Mumbai, lived in Kolkata, and now lives in Ann Arbor, USA. She teaches creative writing workshops, and is a freelance editor and manuscript advisor. She is dedicated to coaching, lifting up every writer she works with, and creating a unique community of writers/students wherever she lives and teaches.



About the Cover Artist

Shannon Rae Daniels is a Cantonese American visual artist and writer whose recent work has explored questions of impermanence, goodness, and beauty as they relate to the self and to communities at large — particularly American Chinatowns, which she is deeply invested in as someone with strong roots in New York City’s Chinatown. In 2023, she was selected for the Emerging Artists Program hosted by The Guild of Artists and Artisans in Ann Arbor, Michigan and then was chosen by a jury to show and sell her work at the Ann Arbor Summer Art Fair. She has taught arts and humanities classes at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Boston Arts Academy. She was born and raised in New York City and currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

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