A vital hybrid collection that affirms there’s “nothing like the thirst / of Black girls who believe in their own dreams”
Poet, photographer, and UM creative writing MFA and PhD graduate Nadia Alexis in conversation with poet and author Melissa Ginsburgfor Beyond the Watershed, a striking debut collection that is a story of survival through love.
About the book
“These poems are blueprints for discovery, an assignment in living unabashedly, lyrics for the moved spirit. Beyond the Watershed invites every reader to bathe in the brilliance of Blackwomen’s burgeoning.” —Mahogany L. Browne
A hybrid collection of poetry and photography, Beyond the Watershedexplores generational trauma, domestic violence, survival, and reclamation through a Haitian American daughter and her Haitian immigrant mother’s experiences. Using stunning imagery drawn from the body, spirit, nature, and cityscapes, Nadia Alexis traces journeys to break free—documenting pain, making space for light, becoming a reckoning, connecting with spirit, and writing oneself into new seasons of safe waters, healthy love, and transformation.
This vital debut affirms that there’s “nothing like the thirst / of Black girls who believe in their own dreams,” even as they navigate non-linear paths to healing. “Sometimes the clouds speak to me / & tell me to look beyond the burning,” the daughter declares, and indeed she does.
About the author
Nadia Alexis is the debut author of Beyond the Watershed, a poetry and photography collection forthcoming from CavanKerry Press in March 2025.
A Harlem-born poet, writer, photographer, and daughter of Haitian immigrants, she has received grants, fellowships, and awards from the Mississippi Arts Commission, Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration, Haitian Creatives Digital Awards, the Hurston/Wright Foundation, among others. Nadia’s photography has been exhibited in the U.S., Cuba, and virtually.
A fellow of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and The Watering Hole, she holds a PhD and MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Mississippi.
About the conversation partner
Melissa Ginsburg is the author of the poetry collections Doll Apollo(winner of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Award) and Dear Weather Ghost, the novels The House Uptown and Sunset City, and three poetry chapbooks: Arbor, Double Blind, and Apollo. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Image, Guernica, Kenyon Review, Fence, Southwest Review, and other magazines.
Originally from Houston, Texas, Melissa studied poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Mississippi, and serves as Associate Editor of Tupelo Quarterly. She lives in Oxford, Mississippi.