About

Nandi Comer is the Poet Laureate of Michigan. She was raised in Detroit, Michigan. She received a B.A. in English and in Spanish with an emphasis on Latin American Culture from the University of Michigan. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Callaloo, and a translation fellowship by US Poets in Mexico.  Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, The Journal of Pan African Studies, Sycamore Review, and Third Coast.  She is the author of American Family: Syndrome (Finishing Line Press) and Tapping Out (Northwestern University Press), which was awarded the 2020 Society of Midland Authors Award and the 2020 Julie Suk Award. Her writing received the Vera Myer Strube Award in poetry and she is the winner of Crab Orchard Review’s 2014 Richard Peterson Poetry Prize. In 2016 she completed an M.A. in African American Literature from the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies and an M.F.A. in Poetry from the English Department at Indiana University. She is a 2019 Kresge Literary Arts Fellow.

 Over the years, Nandi has been dedicated to youth development by serving as a writer-in-residence in Detroit Public Schools and community centers.  She has also worked in collaboration with organizations including YArts and InsideOut Literary Arts Projects. She served as a curriculum developer and youth curriculum consultant for various arts organizations and in 2018 she received William Wiggins Award for Outstanding Teaching at Indiana University.

  In 2013 Comer debuted, “Pedestrians,” a choreo-poem created in collaboration with Indiana University’s African American dance company. She was awarded the 2014 Pioneer Award by the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies in recognition of her commitment to scholarship and production of the arts that explore African American traditions.

Her most recent poetry and performance project, Techno Poetics, was an interdisciplinary performance program that used poetry to tell the story of the origins of Techno and contemporary Detroit music. Informed by her experiences growing up in Detroit, Comer writes and performs literary pieces that incorporate the history of the city while also examining race, gender, sexuality, and class.

She is currently the co-director of Detroit Lit, a program dedicated to providing reading and professional development opportunities to narrative makers of color in Detroit. She is a community leader, an educator, an activist, and a very passionate writer dedicated to supporting contemporary voices.