Chet'la (pronounced: SHAY-la) is the author of Blue Opening, forthcoming from Tin House in September 2025. She is also the author of Field Study (FSG Originals, June 2021), winner of the 2020 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Mistress, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work-Poetry (2020). Her debut essay collection about her relationship to home, heritage, and belonging through domestic and international travel is forthcoming from The Dial Press in 2026.

She is an assistant professor of English at George Washington University and teaches in Randolph College’s Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program.

Photo credit: Shannon Woodloe.