raised in Michigan near the back of his parents’ used bookstore, Isaac Pickell is a Black & Jewish poet, PhD candidate, and adjunct instructor in Detroit. a graduate of Miami University's MFA program, his work’s been featured in Black Warrior Review, Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Fence, The Missouri Review, and Ninth Letter, and you can find his stuff online at Brevity, Protean Magazine, or Sixth Finch.

Isaac is the author of the chapbook everything saved will be last (Black Lawrence Press, 2021) and the full length collection It’s not over once you figure it out (Black Ocean, 2023). He’s has taken a seat in all fifty states and has so much to look forward to.

his dissertation, “Passing Over, Passing Through: Transgressive Ambiguity Beyond the Colorline,” reimagines the literary and cultural history of “passing” through its growth as a contextually bound cultural phenomenon applied not only to race, but other socially constructed and rigid categories which preoccupy the American landscape, including gender, sexuality, and citizenship. by developing “passing” as a critical lens for considering various representations of ambiguous identity, Isaac hopes to promote analysis of other “category crises” grounded in and sensitive to the ongoing story of racial passing.