Yalie Saweda Kamara is the author of Besaydoo, winner of the 2023 Jake Adam York Prize. She is a Sierra Leonean American writer, educator, and researcher from Oakland, California, and the 2022–23 Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate (two-year term). She has received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, the National Book Critics Circle, and Callaloo. Kamara's poetry, fiction, interviews, and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Callaloo, A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, Black Camera: An International Journal, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. She is the Director of Creative Youth Leadership at WordPlay Cincy and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati.