Ambalila Hemsell grew up in Southern Colorado and South India. She holds a BA in English from Reed College and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. While pursuing her MFA, she served as a Writer-In-Residence with InsideOut Literary Arts in Detroit. She is a recipient of the inaugural Kundiman Sewanee Fellowship and a Pushcart nomination. Her poems have appeared in Columbia Journal, The American Literary Review, The Florida Review, Ruminate, and elsewhere. Her debut poetry collection, Queen in Blue, was selected by Carl Phillips for the 2019 Brittingham and Pollack Prizes, and is available now from University of Wisconsin Press. Ambalila lives in Tacoma, WA, with her family.
