Yona Harvey is a writer, poet, and assistant professor in the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2014, Harvey was the recipient of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award after publishing her first poetry collection Hemming the Water, in 2013 with Four Way Books. She wrote her first comic in the early 90s as an undergraduate at Howard University. Harvey graduated from Howard along with acclaimed author Ta-Nehisi Coates, who actually first introduced Harvey and author Roxane Gay to Marvel Comics in 2016. Gay and Harvey are some of the first 2 Black women writers to contribute to Marvel. Harvey has written for Marvel’s World of Wakanda, contributing the origin story of the character Zenzi, inspired by Winnie Mandela. She was also a writer for Marvel’s Black Panther and the Crew along with Coates. Harvey joins us to discuss how her work as a poet informs her work as a comic writer, and vice versa.

After the commercial success of Black Panther, a new generation of black people is seeking authentic representation.