b ferguson (they/them) is a Bahamian poet, essayist and is currently working on a book of nonfiction, The Climate Sirens (Graywolf, forthcoming).
b is the winner of the 2019 Hurston/Wright College Writers Award, a winner of the 2019 92Y Discovery Contest, winner of The Cincinnati Review’s 2019 Robert and Adele Schiff Poetry Prize, winner of The 2019 Breakwater Peseroff Poetry Prize, winner of the 2019 Nâzım Hikmet Poetry Prize, and an Adroit Journal Gregory Djanikian Scholar. They have received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), New York Foundation for the Arts, NYU’s Creative Writing Graduate Program, NYU’s Global Research Initiative, and New York City’s Writers in the Public Schools. They and their writing have been featured, published or forthcoming in The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The New York Times, The New Yorker, VICE News, The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, Academy of American Poet’s Poem-A-Day, and Winter Tangerine, and anthologized in US Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World (Milkweed Editions, 2024) and Best New Poets 2017, among others. They teach creative writing at New York University and The New School. They hope you tell them all about your wonder.
Selected Publications
(or check out b’s cv)
Recorded Lectures and Conversations
“The Poetics of the Climate Crisis,” The New School, 2022
“The Gulf Stream and the Atlantic World: a conversation between Ada Ferrer, Bernard Ferguson, Hugh Hayden and Stephanie Herdrich,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022
Selected Essays & Reviews
“The Lantern, the Lightning, the Sea, and the Raft,” Kenyon Review, 2023
“Damage and Loss,” The New York Times Magazine, 2021
“Searching for Gwendolyn Brooks,” The Paris Review Online, 2021
“Hurricane Dorian Was a Climate Injustice,” The New Yorker, 2019
Micro-Review of Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing, The Common, 2019
“Look At How The Bullets Have Missed,” The Rumpus, May 2018
Selected Poems
“poem about policing,” Scalawag, 2025
“Parkside & Ocean,” Academy of American Poet’s Poem-A-Day
“the wrong horses,” Bat City Review
“awaiting a carriage, any,” Academy of American Poet’s Poem-A-Day
“niggas in the sun,” No Tokens
“Mr. Jailer,” Winner of the 2019 Hurston/Wright Foundation College Writers Award
“it might be a hurricane year,” Narrative
“noseeums,” The Southampton Review
“hearsay,” Breakwater Review
Press, Interviews and Lectures
“The Gulf Stream and the Atlantic World,” a conversation between Ada Ferrer, Bernard Ferguson, Hugh Hayden and Stephanie Herdrich, The Metropolitan Museum
“In the Field: Conversations With Our Contributors,” Water~Stone Review
Q&A, The Hurston/Wright Foundation
On “you’re welcome,” winner of the 2019 Robert and Adele Schiff Poetry Prize, The Cincinnati Review
Check out the full list of b’s published work and features, or their cv.
Reach out. Drop a line.
b is available for commissions, lectures, workshops and other collaborations.