Laura Vrana
@callmevrana.bsky.social
Scholar of African American poetry (author of https://ohiostatepress.org/books/titles/9780814215753.html); Univ of South AL Associate Professor; former Emory FCHI Poetics Fellow & Rutgers postdoc. Opinions mine. She/her/hers.
Pinned
Laura Vrana
@callmevrana.bsky.social
· Nov 11
Can't believe I missed the one-year anniversary of the publication of my monograph on contemporary Black women's poetry last fall! I appreciate all support of the work so far and would love to speak to people about the book, available here: ohiostatepress.org/books/titles...
Amazingly, despite being pregnant, exhausted, and torn in a million work directions this fall, my student evaluations still turned out to be stellar, some of my best ever - so that's a lovely confidence booster for facing the impending challenges of being a working mom!
December 17, 2025 at 7:33 PM
Amazingly, despite being pregnant, exhausted, and torn in a million work directions this fall, my student evaluations still turned out to be stellar, some of my best ever - so that's a lovely confidence booster for facing the impending challenges of being a working mom!
Reposted by Laura Vrana
$1.6 million for unethical experimentation on African infants.
December 17, 2025 at 7:24 PM
$1.6 million for unethical experimentation on African infants.
Reposted by Laura Vrana
Today is the 252nd anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. Along with British East India Company Tea, the first edition of Poems on Various Subjects was among the cargo carried from London to Boston on The Dartmouth. Today, the Boston Tea Party museum displays WC #1234: www.wheatleycensus.org/wc/1234/
Wheatley Census
www.wheatleycensus.org
December 16, 2025 at 6:59 PM
Today is the 252nd anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. Along with British East India Company Tea, the first edition of Poems on Various Subjects was among the cargo carried from London to Boston on The Dartmouth. Today, the Boston Tea Party museum displays WC #1234: www.wheatleycensus.org/wc/1234/
How am I only just now discovering @karismaprice.bsky.social (and her debut collection I'm Always So Serious)? Grateful to my new colleague for bringing her to my attention & helping to bring her to our campus to read in January, because I cannot stop reading & rereading these extraordinary poems!!
December 15, 2025 at 7:26 PM
How am I only just now discovering @karismaprice.bsky.social (and her debut collection I'm Always So Serious)? Grateful to my new colleague for bringing her to my attention & helping to bring her to our campus to read in January, because I cannot stop reading & rereading these extraordinary poems!!
Reposted by Laura Vrana
As we mourn Rob Reiner, don’t skip this: he was, pretty much, personally responsible for overturning California’s Prop 8 banning same sex marriage.
www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bus...
www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bus...
How Rob Reiner became anti-Prop. 8 kingpin
Rob Reiner reflects on the critical role he played in getting California's gay marriage ban overturned.
www.hollywoodreporter.com
December 15, 2025 at 1:37 PM
As we mourn Rob Reiner, don’t skip this: he was, pretty much, personally responsible for overturning California’s Prop 8 banning same sex marriage.
www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bus...
www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bus...
Reposted by Laura Vrana
Can't say I ever expected to see a "That Font was No Angel" headline. But here we are.
December 11, 2025 at 11:56 AM
Can't say I ever expected to see a "That Font was No Angel" headline. But here we are.
Reposted by Laura Vrana
I can't stop thinking about the purported drug smugglers being murdered by the US military. The punishment for drug offenses isn't the death penalty. This is just bloodlust and men in suits playing with lives they don't care about. It's truly grotesque and gravely compromises this country.
December 5, 2025 at 4:12 PM
I can't stop thinking about the purported drug smugglers being murdered by the US military. The punishment for drug offenses isn't the death penalty. This is just bloodlust and men in suits playing with lives they don't care about. It's truly grotesque and gravely compromises this country.
Reposted by Laura Vrana
The US government is summarily executing people on a weekly basis without telling the American people any of their names or presenting any proof of their guilt, for alleged crimes that do not carry the death penalty in the US.
December 6, 2025 at 2:17 PM
The US government is summarily executing people on a weekly basis without telling the American people any of their names or presenting any proof of their guilt, for alleged crimes that do not carry the death penalty in the US.
African American lit colleagues: which works by Hortense Spillers do you consider the most indispensable to recommend first to folks recently discovering her brilliant theorizing? A colleague has asked, and I'm struggling not just to say *ALL OF IT*!!!
December 2, 2025 at 8:01 PM
African American lit colleagues: which works by Hortense Spillers do you consider the most indispensable to recommend first to folks recently discovering her brilliant theorizing? A colleague has asked, and I'm struggling not just to say *ALL OF IT*!!!
Last week of classes: teaching Carmen Maria Machado's "The Husband Stitch" in my gen ed American literature survey and screening/discussing "Sinners" in my 400/500-level Contemporary Black Fiction class, so yea, loving my job!
December 1, 2025 at 6:40 PM
Last week of classes: teaching Carmen Maria Machado's "The Husband Stitch" in my gen ed American literature survey and screening/discussing "Sinners" in my 400/500-level Contemporary Black Fiction class, so yea, loving my job!
Reposted by Laura Vrana
Home Depot wanted holiday cheer, got a whole-ass choir calling out their partnership with ICE instead…
November 29, 2025 at 6:18 AM
Home Depot wanted holiday cheer, got a whole-ass choir calling out their partnership with ICE instead…
Reposted by Laura Vrana
It remains not only so shameful and such a profound betrayal but also just so EMBARRASSING that universities are signing things that are like:
"Men" and "Women" are defined the way President Buttface said in his Big Fancy Statement.
Signed,
The Leader of an Actual Institution of Higher Education
"Men" and "Women" are defined the way President Buttface said in his Big Fancy Statement.
Signed,
The Leader of an Actual Institution of Higher Education
November 29, 2025 at 1:29 PM
It remains not only so shameful and such a profound betrayal but also just so EMBARRASSING that universities are signing things that are like:
"Men" and "Women" are defined the way President Buttface said in his Big Fancy Statement.
Signed,
The Leader of an Actual Institution of Higher Education
"Men" and "Women" are defined the way President Buttface said in his Big Fancy Statement.
Signed,
The Leader of an Actual Institution of Higher Education
You could purchase my monograph Pitfalls of Prestige: Black Women and Literary Recognition via Bookshop for Small Business Saturday! bookshop.org/p/books/pitf...
Pitfalls of Prestige: Black Women and Literary Recognition
Black Women and Literary Recognition
bookshop.org
November 29, 2025 at 8:35 PM
You could purchase my monograph Pitfalls of Prestige: Black Women and Literary Recognition via Bookshop for Small Business Saturday! bookshop.org/p/books/pitf...
Reposted by Laura Vrana
“If vaccines work, why would you need a booster?” he asks as he changes his oil for the third time that year.
November 28, 2025 at 5:17 PM
“If vaccines work, why would you need a booster?” he asks as he changes his oil for the third time that year.
Enjoying a lovely, low-key Alabama Thanksgiving working on midday food preparation for our traditional enormous feast (with many leftovers) for just 2! Well, I guess for 3...Therefore feeling *extremely* extra thankful this year!
November 27, 2025 at 8:02 PM
Enjoying a lovely, low-key Alabama Thanksgiving working on midday food preparation for our traditional enormous feast (with many leftovers) for just 2! Well, I guess for 3...Therefore feeling *extremely* extra thankful this year!
Reposted by Laura Vrana
Hang onto these pictures because Hegseth will have the offending sign removed as soon as he sobers up today.
Sign at the US Military Academy at West Point:
November 23, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Hang onto these pictures because Hegseth will have the offending sign removed as soon as he sobers up today.
Reposted by Laura Vrana
A senior ICE official just admitted in an evidentiary hearing in Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case that someone else drafted his declaration in the case and he didn’t know what certain words meant.
November 20, 2025 at 5:18 PM
A senior ICE official just admitted in an evidentiary hearing in Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case that someone else drafted his declaration in the case and he didn’t know what certain words meant.
Reposted by Laura Vrana
Patricia Smith’s The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems has won the National Book Award for Poetry! Read more here: buff.ly/HKCSQQQ
Patricia Smith on How a Poet Ages
Nobody—and I mean NOBODY—warned me about my pubic hair. It glistened for years, springy and sprite, an Ivory Soap-scented welcome mat for lucky episodic visitors. I never gave it much thought, cert…
lithub.com
November 20, 2025 at 2:19 AM
Patricia Smith’s The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems has won the National Book Award for Poetry! Read more here: buff.ly/HKCSQQQ
Reposted by Laura Vrana
this would have been a month-long scandal in 2011
President Trump walking past the flag at the Whitehouse which has fallen to the ground
November 18, 2025 at 12:38 AM
this would have been a month-long scandal in 2011
Reposted by Laura Vrana
Reposted by Laura Vrana
I just don’t see how we can pretend even for a moment that anything involving our federal government is remotely normal when the president is covering up his involvement in a child sex trafficking ring. Like, what are we doing here
November 15, 2025 at 1:14 AM
I just don’t see how we can pretend even for a moment that anything involving our federal government is remotely normal when the president is covering up his involvement in a child sex trafficking ring. Like, what are we doing here
Reposted by Laura Vrana
Can someone dial the Unprecedented Times meter back down to a respectable number because I’m tired.
November 14, 2025 at 8:07 PM
Can someone dial the Unprecedented Times meter back down to a respectable number because I’m tired.
Can't believe I missed the one-year anniversary of the publication of my monograph on contemporary Black women's poetry last fall! I appreciate all support of the work so far and would love to speak to people about the book, available here: ohiostatepress.org/books/titles...
November 11, 2025 at 6:01 PM
Can't believe I missed the one-year anniversary of the publication of my monograph on contemporary Black women's poetry last fall! I appreciate all support of the work so far and would love to speak to people about the book, available here: ohiostatepress.org/books/titles...
Reposted by Laura Vrana
“I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time.”
aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...
aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...
November 9, 2025 at 5:26 PM
“I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time.”
aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...
aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...
Excited this afternoon to finally dig into Tiana Clark's newest poetry collection, Scorched Earth! Been eager for a new book by her since the extraordinary I Can't Talk About the Trees Without the Blood.
November 8, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Excited this afternoon to finally dig into Tiana Clark's newest poetry collection, Scorched Earth! Been eager for a new book by her since the extraordinary I Can't Talk About the Trees Without the Blood.