Amari

Amari Amai is a Black transmasculine storyteller and worldbuilder born and raised in Chicago. As a Great Migration baby with roots in Jackson, Mississippi, Amari’s work is rooted in oral tradition and ancestral embodiment on and off the page, using poetry, folklore, soundscapes, and performance to bend time and add texture to forgotten histories and lived experiences of Black trans folks. Their work has received support and fellowships from Tin House, Periplus Collective, Sundress Academy for the Arts, Chicago Poetry Center, The Watering Hole, Vermont Studio Center, and Earthseed Black Family Archive Project. Amari is the founder of Crossroads Writers Collective, a communal writing group for Black queer folks based in Chicago. As a 2025 Pushcart Prize and 2025 Best Small Fictions Nominee, they are currently at work on their debut poetry collection, with poems published and forthcoming in beestung magazine, Verse Daily, Epiphany Literary Magazine, and Callaloo Journal.

Are you a Black queer writer in Chicago? Visit @crossroadswriterscollective on Instagram! We’d love to have you.