Arianne Elena Payne
Arianne Elena Payne is a Black writer, multidisciplinary creative, and aspiring historian from Chicago, Illinois. She has received the 2022 Graybeal-Gowen Poetry Prize, the 2022 Virginia Downs Poetry Award, and the 2019 Frederick Hartmann Poetry Prize. Her work has been featured in Voicemail Poems, TORCH, Shenandoah and is forthcoming in the Indiana Review and Hooligan Magazine. Situated in the complexities and lyricism of Blackness, girlhood, and geographies of resistance—her work strives to take Black people and their histories seriously.
Reading List
The Contours of Marriage
Birmingham, Alabama 1952 we’re just bone beneath the foot of the statute never the right kind of light, of love—lashed with bridal wreath, laughed & gasped at my groom can’t be man, can’t know wife don’t got write to paper, to a drama of snow, a train of sugar—they hate us so they turn the […]
Posts
Mother-Daughter Relationships and Resilience: A Conversation with Arianne Elena Payne and Clarie Gor
Arianne Elena Payne, the poet behind “The Contours of Marriage” and Clarie Gor, the author of Mother Hen, chat about their inspirations and creative processes for their works, both featured in the Spring 2023 issue of Shenandoah. Arianne: What is the title and story of your piece that is featured in Volume 72.2 of […]