Meredith Nnoka is a Chicago-based poet, teacher, and prison abolitionist. She is the author of the chapbooks I Could Never Be Your Woman (O, Miami, 2023) and A Hunger Called Music: A Verse History of Black Music (C&R Press, 2016). Nnoka holds a BA from Smith College and an MA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, both in Africana studies. She teaches poetry in carceral facilities and has received fellowships from Illinois Humanities, Lambda Literary, and the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project. Twice nominated for Best of the Net, her poems have appeared in Diode Poetry Journal, Four Way Review, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere.