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CameronBarnettis a poet and teacher living in Pittsburgh, PA. He is the author ofMurmurandThe Drowning Boy's Guide to Water, the winner of the Autumn House Press Rising Writer Prize and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. Other honors include a 2019 Carol R. Brown Creative Achievement Award for Emerging Artist and serving as the '22-'24 Emerging Black Writer in Residence at Chatham University. Cameron teaches at his middle school alma mater, Falk Laboratory School. His work explores the complexity of race, place, and relationships for Black people in America.
Complexity and surprise arrive with each page turn of Cameron Barnett's debut collection, The Drowning Boy's Guide to Water. Barnett's poems push past the likes of these digital days toward the deeply difficult work of self-reflection and discomfort. There is no one way to be Black in the United States and these poems affirm that reality. They are an answer to both Black-checking and America's tired legacy of racism. These poems know to be Black is a beautiful and varied state of being. I was told it was a bad thing, they admit, and then turn that lie on its head. --Yona Harvey (1/1/2017 12:00:00 AM)
