Alafia Nicole Sessions is a black poet, writer and mother living in Atlanta. She currently works as an educator, actress, herbalist and birthworker. Nine Drops of Turpentine, Alafia's debut poetry collection, was selected by Victoria Chang as the winner of the Georgia Poetry Prize and will be published by University of Georgia Press in March 2027.

 

Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in POETRY, Obsidian, Ploughshares, Poem-a-Day, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cincinnati Review, Ecopoetry Anthology, Southern Humanities Review, Indiana Review, Los Angeles Review, Poetry Daily and elsewhere. Alafia is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Cave Canem, Yaddo, The Watering Hole, Sustainable Arts Foundation, Money For Women / The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, SWWIM and Oak Spring Garden Foundation. The 2025 winner of Georgia Writers' John Lewis Writing Grant, Alafia was selected by Evie Shockley as the winner of the 2023 Furious Flower Prize. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, thrice nominated for Best New Poets and selected as a semi-finalist for The Adroit Journal's Gregory Djanikian Scholarship. Alafia also received the Howard Moss Residency in Poetry.

 

Her debut manuscript was selected as an Honorable Mention by Patricia Smith for the Jake Adam York Prize, a finalist for the 2025 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize and a semi-finalist for Persea Books’ Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize.