Article
Rachel Atakpa is a poet and first-generation student at the University of Kansas studying English and Spanish. As a Ronald E. McNair scholar, Atakpa conducts research on Black women’s writing. At KU, she is the chief editor of the Undergraduate Research Journal for the Humanities, a writing fellow and consultant for the writing center, Multicultural Scholar, and a honors student. Atakpa is the 2018 recipient of the Langston Hughes Award for Creative Writing in Poetry and Brosseau Creativity Award for Writing. Her poetry has appeared in Kiosk Magazine and The Shade Journal, and is forthcoming in Women, Gender, & Families of Color, Asterism, and Berkeley Poetry Review. Her work engages questions of body politics, materialism, and futurity, and believes in intuition, love, and healing. After graduating, Atakpa will pursue graduate studies in English with the intention to do work in community rebuilding, prison abolitionism, child and adult literacy, and academia.
Updated May 2018