James O’Bannon

James O’Bannon is a Black writer from Cincinnati, Ohio, seeking to explore themes of Blackness, religion, and longevity through poetry. He received a BA in English from Northern Kentucky University in 2016 and an MFA from Fresno State University in 2019. His poetry reflects on societal views of Black mental and how we engage with our own memory. James owes everything to his grandmother, who instilled a love of reading and language in him from a young age. He has participated as a reader at various Fresno, CA LitHop events, and he has been a featured reader for Northern Kentucky University’s Loch Norse Open Mic reading series. His writing has appeared in Waxwing, Spry Literary Journal, Nomadic Press as part of the Nomadic Ground Series, and Flies, Cockroaches, and Poets, and is forthcoming in Northwest Review.