Aozora Brockman

Aozora Brockman is a mixed-Japanese poet and essayist. She was raised on an organic vegetable farm in Central Illinois, and is the author of the chapbooks The Happiness of Dirt and Memory of a Girl. A recipient of the 2015 Jean Meyer Aloe Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, her creative work has appeared in the Cortland Review, Fifth Wednesday, and Catapult. Along with her studies in poetry, Aozora is making gradual progress on a book of essays that probe the many faces of purity--sexual purity, racial/ethnic purity, commodified purity of food/land--and their oftentimes harmful repercussions on her life.