2025 Derricotte/Eady Prize Reading: Great River by Mia Word

In collaboration with O, Miami, this annual reading celebrates the winner of the Derricotte/Eady Prize. As one of the nation’s foremost poetry organizations supporting Black poets, join us to hear Mia Word read from her prize-winning chapbook, Great River. Mia Word will be joined by prize judge, Brandon Johnson.

About

Mia Word is a poet hailing from the Mississippi Delta. Her poetry is often influenced by her Southern upbringing and heritage, rooted in Blues, ancestry, and storytelling. She is a recent graduate of Harvard University, where she earned a Bachelors of Arts in English Literature and a minor in Sociology. At Harvard, she received the Edward Eager Memorial Prize for Creative Writing and the David McCord Prize for Depth of Talent in the Literary Arts. She has been a featured poet at the Harvard Art Museum and her work is forthcoming and has appeared in the Yale University Press, Indigo Magazin,e and The Harvard Gazette.

Brandon D. Johnson is the author of Love’s Skin, Man Burns Ant, The Strangers Between, and co-author of The Black Rooster Social Inn: This Is the Place. He is published in several print and online journals and anthologies. He is a Cave Canem Graduate Fellow (97-99). He was a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Brandon is also a photographer and short fiction writer. Born in Gary, Indiana, he received his BA from Wabash College (1978) in Indiana and his JD from Antioch School of Law (1981) in Washington, DC. Brandon lives with his wife and children in Washington, DC.

Partners

O, Miami builds literary culture in Miami, FL. In collaboration with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, O, Miami produces a visiting writer series, a publishing imprint, a poets-in-the-community workshop program, and the O, Miami Poetry Festival.

Host or Publisher Cave Canem Foundation, Inc.