Press Kit
Bios
MINI BIO [62 words]
Saleem Hue Penny (him/friend) is a Black, disabled, “rural hip-hop blues"" poet who punctuates his hybrid/mixed-media work with drum loops, Jim Crow artifacts, and birch bark. He is a proud Cave Canem Fellow, 2024 Disability Futures Fellow, and a member of O| Sessions' Black Listening cohort. Saleem is a worker-owner of Cooperation Racine, L.W.C.A in Englewood, Chicago.
BRIEF BIO [71 words]
Saleem Hue Penny (him/friend) is a Black, disabled, “rural hip-hop blues'' poet who punctuates his hybrid/mixed media work with drum loops, Jim Crow artifacts, and birch bark. A proud Cave Canem Fellow, 2024 Disability Futures Fellow, and a member of O|Sessions Black Listening cohort, Saleem edits at Bellevue Literary Review and was a 2021 Poetry Coalition Fellow. He is a worker-owner of Cooperation Racine, L.W.C.A in Englewood, Chicago.
SHORT BIO [192 words]
Saleem Hue Penny (him/friend) is a Black, disabled poet expanding the pastoral tradition of the Southern Black Belt using a ""rural hip-hop blues"" aesthetic. Punctuating his hybrid work with construction scraps, drum loops, Jim Crow artifacts, and birch bark, Saleem explores how young people of color traverse wild spaces and define freedom on their own terms.
Saleem’s art and advocacy are inseparable. He is a proud Cave Canem Fellow, 2024 Disability Futures Fellow, and a member of O|Sessions Black Listening cohort. Saleem was an inaugural PeoplesHub Social Justice Artist-in-Residence and a 2021 Poetry Coalition Fellow. A board member at Ecosystems of Care, a parenting mentor at ConTextos, and a founding worker-owner of Cooperation Racine, L.W.C.A in Englewood, Chicago, Saleem’s work is rooted in Disability Justice. He is an assistant poetry editor at Bellevue Literary Review and has received support from Hurston/Wright Writers Week Worksop, Sundress Academy for the Arts, and Vermont Studio Center.
Author photos
Image description
Saleem Hue Penny (him/friend) is a Black man with an ever-widening smile, handlebar mustache, and partially paralyzed face. His right hand is propping his dimpled chin, his left arm is folded across his midriff and the rest of his body is outside the frame. He is wearing a black ballcap, a right-sided cochlear implant, clear-framed glasses, and a black sweatshirt with an abstract portrait. Saleem is inside a brightly lit warehouse garden, leaning against a floor-to-ceiling trellis housing thick ivy. A partially obscured doorway lies on the edge of the frame. The image is black & white.
Image description
A color photo of Saleem Hue Penny (him/friend) a bald, mustachioed Black man with a partially paralyzed face and a smile, both pensive and content. He wears clear glasses and has a right-sided cochlear implant (obscured in the photo). He is in a studio, turned 90° perpendicular to the camera, with fading sunlight reflecting off his silver floral dashiki and a budget-friendly gold necklace. Saleem is adding narrative layers to a visual poem of torn paper bags and scanned vestibular therapy illustrations. The collage is mounted on a white wall with thumbtacks and blue painter's tape. His eyelids are heavy and his gaze is downcast, looking at a calligraphy pen. A dimpled grin indicates his hope.
Image description
A color photo of Saleem Hue Penny (him/friend), a Black man with a partially-paralyzed face, an ever-widening smile, and a handlebar mustache. He directly faces the camera, wearing clear-frame glasses, a plastic moisture chamber over his right eye, and a right-sided cochlear implant (obscured in the photo). He is seated, comfortably hunched over a table, with arms loosely folded. He wears a white T-shirt with “BLK JOY” printed inside a red square. Saleem wears a pink/yellow floral print bandana around his neck, in contrast to the scuffed black ring on his right hand and a black medical bracelet on his right wrist. Saleem is inside a brightly lit warehouse garden. Framed artwork and a potted tree line the background. On the table are two pamphlet-style books created during 1st and 2nd grade, respectively.