Zoë Gadegbeku is a Ghanaian writer whose first novel, Blue Futures, Break Open, is forthcoming from West Virginia University Press. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Blackbird, Saraba Magazine, Afreada, Torch Literary Arts, The Fem Lit Mag, and The Best Small Fictions. Her poem “Benediction for Black Madonna” was among the winners of the 2020 City of Boston Mayor’s Poetry Program contest. She earned a 2020 Call To Create residency at Mother Mercy, where she served as an artist incubator. She was a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in June 2019 and a participant in the 2017 Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop in Barbados. She received her MFA in creative writing from Emerson College and works full time as a copy editor.  

Photo by Lloyd K. Sarpong