Shaina Phenix is a Black, queer poet, essayist, and educator from Harlem, NY.

She is the author of To Be Named Something Else from the University of Arkansas Press, winner of the 2023 Miller Williams Poetry Prize selected by Patricia Smith. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Pinch Journal, Puerto del Sol, Foglifter Press, The Offing, CRAFT Magazine, The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast Journal, and Haymarket Books.

She received a BA in Poetry & Africana studies at Hampshire College, and holds an MFA in Poetry from Virginia Tech. She was the 2021-2022 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

She is an Assistant Professor of English at Elon University and has taught both middle and high school humanities, theater, and creative writing.