Anaïs Duplan

Duplan was born in Jacmel, Haiti.[1] He moved to the United States as a child and grew up in Boston and Brooklyn with his mother.[7] His writing about his father's absence from his childhood and how it impacted his understanding of gender norms was published in The Paris Review,[8] and he discussed his parents' impact on his work in an interview with The Rumpus.[9] He also lived in Cuba for several years.[10] Eventually, after attending Rhode Island School of Design, Duplan graduated from Bennington College in 2014[11] and then the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2017.[12]

Duplan's poetry publications include the book Take This Stallion, published in 2016 by Brooklyn Arts Press, which Publishers Weekly wrote in a review "tactfully manages to stir the comical and casual into poems about pain, crippling emotional uncertainty, substance abuse, and death,"[13] and I NEED MUSIC, published in 2021 by Action Books.[2][6] The latter received praise from poets Jericho Brown, Major Jackson, and Shane McCrae,[14] as well as positive reviews from Literary Hub[15] and Make.[16] In June 2021, Duplan was the guest editor for the Academy of American Poets's Poem-a-Day series.[17][18]

Duplan's first nonfiction book, Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture, was published by Black Ocean Press in 2020 after excerpts were published in Ploughshares[19] and Hyperallergic.[20] The nonfiction book discusses the meanings of transition and passing in regard to gender, including the irreversible effects of testosterone therapy.[19] Claudia Rankine listed it as a book she looked forward to reading in an interview with The New York Times,[21] Hanif Abdurraqib called it "futuristic work,"[22] and a review in Colorado Review noted that its style is "as much theoretical as it is journalistic as it is in the style of manifesto."[23] In 2022, he received a Whiting Award for nonfiction,[9] which NPR noted was a predictor of writers who would go onto become "household names."[5] Vanity Fair noted Duplan's outfit at the award reception as a "spectacular jumpsuit."[3]

In 2016, Duplan founded the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, an artist residency program[8][24] developed to give artists of color arts space after a fundraiser on Kickstarter.[25] The first artists-in-residence while Duplan served as director were Yulan Grant, Terrence Nance, Krista Franklin.[25] In 2021, the center started new collaborations with Iowa City, including murals, interviews, and performances.[26] While at Iowa, Duplan met Tracie Morris, when they "both presented talks at Columbia University’s More Than A Manifesto conference" and she later interviewed him about black sociality, academia, and influences for The Los Angeles Review of Books.[12] Duplan was also interviewed for the New York City Trans Oral History Project, in conjunction with New York Public Library's oral history project.[10] He has been teaching at Bennington College, his alma mater, since 2021.