Desiree C. Bailey is the author of the acclaimed debut collection What Noise Against the Cane (Yale University Press, 2021), which won the 2020 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and is a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry. She is also the author of the fiction chapbook In Dirt or Saltwater (O'clock Press, 2016) and has short stories and poems published in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, American Short Fiction, Callaloo, the Academy of American Poets and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from the Norman Mailer Center, Kimbilio Fiction, Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Poets House, The Conversation, Princeton in Africa and the James Merrill House. She has received awards from the New York State Council on the Arts/New York Foundation for the Arts and Poets & Writers.