About Angel

Angel C. Dye is a poet, spoken word artist, and editor from Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas by way of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Howard University and is a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing candidate at the University of Kentucky. Angel has published two chapbooks entitled Rhyme Or Reason (2 Pens & Lint, 2013) and urban is the new n@&!% (…and other names we answer to) (EdenWorks Publishing, 2015). Most recently Angel compiled and edited an anthology entitled Love Letters to Our Daughters: A Collection of Womanly Affirmations with the aim of bringing together diverse women’s voices to inspire and uplift other budding and blossoming women (EdenWorks, 2015). Love Letters is featured in Professor Candice Benbow’s #LemonadeSyllabus and in Melissa Harris-Perry and Elle.com’s #SeatSyllabus.

Angel’s poetry has been recognized and awarded locally, regionally, and nationally. She is a three-time published poet in Teen Ink Magazine, a 1st and 2nd place winner in the 2015 and 2017 Tuckson Health Connections Healing Stories Creative Writing Contest, a 1st and 3rd place Chairman’s Prize for Poetry winner in the 2015 Middle Atlantic Writers Association Creative Writing Contest, and she received an Honorable Mention in the 2016 Margaret Walker Prizes in Poetry Creative Writing Contest through the College Language Association. She has been the opening artist for acclaimed poets and NAACP Image Award winners Frank X Walker and Claudia Rankine as well as for poet Roger Bonair-Agard. Her work has been published in Sixfold Journal,  About Place Journal, and African Voices Magazine. Her essay on Beyonce’s LEMONADE visual album is forthcoming in Feminista Jones’ King Bey Bible (2017).

Angel is passionate about poetry and fine arts in all forms and plans to eventually become a professor of Creative Writing plus found a non-profit after school conservatory for at-risk K-12 students who wish to cultivate gifts in the arts. 

Angel writes to ask, process, and practice catharsis even when her skinfolk cannot or do not. She writes because growing up in the Pentecostal church taught her that there are different ways to pray. Her writing unpacks mental illness and unconventional or fragmented family ties. She is committed to illuminating injustice and suffering but joy and triumph in black narratives.