Robin Coste Lewis is a Provost’s Fellow in Poetry and Visual Studies at the University of Southern California. She is also a Cave Canem fellow and a fellow of the Los Angeles Institute of the Humanities.  She received her MFA from NYU in poetry, and an MTS in Sanskrit and comparative religious literature from the Divinity School at Harvard University. A finalist for the International War Poetry Prize, the National Rita Dove Prize, and the Discovery Prize, her work has appeared in various journals and anthologies, including The Massachusetts Review, Callaloo, The Harvard  Gay & Lesbian Review, Transition, VIDA, Phantom Limb, and Lambda, amongst others.  She has taught at Wheaton College, Hunter College, Hampshire College and the NYU Low-Residency MFA in Paris.  Fellowships and awards include the Caldera Foundation, the Ragdale Foundation, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Summer Literary Seminars in Kenya.  Her collection Voyage of the Sable Venus is forthcoming from Knopf.  Born in Compton, California, her family is from New Orleans.