Hub City Press is pleased to announce that it will publish Poet and Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist and author of Mend Kwoya Fagin Maples’s poetry book, Long Eye, in the spring of 2026.
Long Eye is an autobiographical oceanic collection of poetry reflecting a neurodiverse mind moving through the world in a Black woman’s body, in the voice of a woman transformed into the water deity Mami Wata, that seeks to depict Black familial relations in a society built against them.
Maples says, “Hub City Press is creating a literary legacy that I’m thrilled to be a part of. They’ve amplified the voices of so many writers I deeply admire and respect. In many ways, this book is about home, about South Carolina, and Hub City is the perfect fit for these poems. I consider it an honor to have it as a home for my collection.”
Kwoya Fagin Maples is a poet, woodworker and teacher of creative writing. A Charleston, S.C. native, her creative practice spans both literary and visual arts. She is the author of Long Eye, forthcoming from Hub City Press, and co-editor of Eye for an I: An Anthology of Documentary Poetry, forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press.
Maples is a fellowship recipient of Cave Canem and the Alabama State Council on the Arts. Her debut collection, Mend (University Press of Kentucky, 2018) received a 2019 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award as Finalist for Poetry, and was named a 2019 Finalist for the Housatonic Book Award for Poetry. Before publication, Mend received a grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation and was chosen finalist for AWP’s Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. Mend tells the story of the birth of obstetrics and gynecology in America and the role enslaved black women played in that process.
In addition to a chapbook entitled Something of Yours (Finishing Line Press, 2010) her work has been published in several journals and anthologies including Obsidian, Pluck!, The Academy of American Poets, Poetry Magazine, and several others. Maples is an Assistant Professor in the program for Creative Writing at the University of Alabama, home of the Black Warrior Review.
Written by Hub City Press.