A Collection of Poems 
by Naomi Scherelle

Naomi Scherelle (she/they) is a living witness with Mississippi blood. She is a spirited writer, educator, and alchemist from Chicago cultivating soft places for Black folks to land.  Naomi aids folks in the practice of returning to the body and nurturing a personal relationship with their divinity. She explores how our metaphysical homecoming expands the space and freedoms we access in our physical worlds. As a multi-dimensional artist living in New Orleans, Naomi crafts stories and creates experiences rooted in remembering, acceptance, pleasure and change grounded in Black Feminist scholarship. Through their work, Naomi seeks to excavate the heart of human suffering and inspire moments of levity and transmutation.  

Naomi’s first and forever love is the page. In her literary works she architects poems, works of fiction, and essays that incorporate fantasy, magical realism, and themes of revival. On their Substack, The Pleasure Archive, Naomi explores the interdependence of joy and pain. Through essays, poems, and meditative exercises Naomi unveils musings on their journey for personal sovereignty and the magnitude of feasting on pleasure in the midst of a world on fire. Naomi creates these works as the descendant of a captured people forced to build on stolen land. Following the release of her chapbook, The Clearing: A Black Girl Collecting Her Bones, Naomi began writing her first novel In Search of Home, a speculative fiction story set in 2040 that interrogates how environmental decay impacts our desire, decisions, and relationships. Most recently, Naomi was selected to workshop their novel with Abode Press and Tin House. Naomi’s published works have appeared in midnight & indigo, Blackberry A Magazine, and Center for Black Literature's Killen’s Review.