about the author

photo credit: Emily Harney

Enzo Silon Surin is a Haitian-born award-winning poet, author, educator, speaker, publisher and social advocate. He has taught, performed, and lectured at schools, universities, festivals and various other venues and serves as a keynote speaker on topics such as social justice, mental health reform, the immigrant experience, and racial disparities in America. He has been recognized for his artistry and literary citizenship and has dedicated his life and career to affecting social change through creative and critical writing. He is the author of four collections of poetry, including American Scapegoat (Black Lawrence Press, 2023) and When My Body Was A Clinched Fist (2020), winner of the 21st Annual Massachusetts Book Awards. He is also co-editor of Where We Stand: Poems of Black Resilience (Cherry Castle Publishing, 2022), Publisher at Central Square Press and Founder/Executive Director at the Faraday Publishing Company, a nonprofit literary services and social advocacy organization. For more, visit enzosurinink.org

 

 

PRAISES FOR A LETTER OF RESIGNATION

“In A Letter of Resignation, Enzo Silon Surin has crafted a poetic composition that laments both the historic and contemporary ‘matterless’ nature of black lives in America. It is a masterpiece. Much like James Baldwin before him, Surin’s gripping work is equal parts a catalog of black suffering and a bold declaration of independence from the tyranny of racism. In a time in the United States when injustice is a bully with a Goliath-like roar, Surin answers back with poetic stones of resistance. That act of courage is nothing to take lightly. Neither is this superbly written book.” -Truth Thomas, Author of SPEAK WATER

 

“Inspired by such heroic voices as Martinique’s Aimé Césaire, Enzo Silon Surin brings his Haitian roots to bear on the landscape of America in an epic sweep of incantatory rhythms evoking the enduring spirit of the African Diaspora. The immediacy of his poetry is grounded in his sense of history, as twenty-first century black immigrants come to the U.S. to negotiate race and culture. They are the new African Americans whose histories now meet that of the first African Americans in a hybridity that goes unarticulated until we see this kind of poetry. A Letter of Resignation is a remarkable feat.” -Afaa Michael Weaver, Author of SPIRIT BOXING