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Prayer like Water, Water like Prayer: A Review of Nadia Alexis’ Beyond the Watershed
Across Nadia Alexis’ debut poetry collection Beyond the Watershed (CavanKerry, 2025) prayer and water are consistent, but their definitions are not. At times an action or longing and at others a dream or a force, prayer and water are constantly transforming, just like the collection’s speaker.
Poetry, Healing, and the Spirit of Survival: A Conversation with Nadia Alexis
In the Black poetic tradition, water is employed as both symbolism and metaphor. Water is not only used to tell stories of our survival—wade in the water—but it also connects us to our collective strength and highlights our history beyond the middle passage. In Nadia Alexis’s debut poetry collection, Beyond the Watershed (CavanKerry Press, 2025), she follows this tradition, and readers experience water as baptismal, as cleansing, and as an emotional rebirth.
Beyond Survival: Nadia Alexis’s Testament to Love, Memory, and Reclamation
From a book review: Beyond the Watershed by Nadia Alexis is not just a collection of poetry and photography—it is a haunting echo of lineage, an unflinching dialogue between a Haitian American daughter and her Haitian immigrant mother.
‘Nothing Like the Thirst’ - The Daily Leader’s PROFILE 2025
Feature article on Nadia Alexis in The Daily Leader’s arts-focused PROFILE Magazine issue for 2025. See cover art and pages 14-15.
Highly Anticipated Caribbean Book Releases To Read In 2025
Beyond the Watershed featured on this list.
For fans of Caribbean literature, there’s nothing quite like the anticipation of a new literary season. To help you stay ahead of the curve, we’ve curated a list of the most highly anticipated Caribbean releases set to debut in 2025.
What to Read for National Poetry Month
Beyond the Watershed featured on a NaPoMo list.
Emerging BIWOC Poet Spotlight: Nadia Alexis
This monthly series features poems by women of color in the early stages of their publishing careers. It is our intention to create more space at Perugia for the work of poets who are Black, Indigenous, and women of color (BIWOC).
Nadia Alexis brings ‘Beyond the Watershed’ to Oxford
Locals and literary lovers gathered at Off Square Books to celebrate the release of Nadia Alexis’ debut poetry collection, “Beyond the Watershed,” at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, March 5. At the event, Alexis read a few pieces from her collection and answered questions from Melissa Ginsburg, an associate professor of creative writing and literature, as well as the audience.
Publishers Weekly - Spring 2025 Fiction & Nonfiction Preview: Poetry
Beyond the Watershed featured on Publishers Weekly - Spring 2025 Fiction & Nonfiction Preview: Poetry
Poets & Writers Selects Ten Early Career Poets for Get the Word Out Publicity Incubator
Poets & Writers today announced the ten poets who have been selected to participate in Get the Word Out, a publicity incubator for early career authors.
Local Educator, Dr. Nadia Alexis, Awarded Mississippi Arts Commission Grant for 2024 Literature Conference
“Dr. Nadia Alexis has received a mini-grant from the Mississippi Arts Commission (MAC). This grant is part of MAC's $1.75 million grant distribution for the 2024 fiscal year. The grant will help Dr. Alexis attend the 2024 Kweli Color of Children’s Literature Conference in New York City, a platform for budding writers to hone their skills and network with industry professionals...”
Nadia Alexis presents her collection “What Endures” at SouthTalks
“As African music played in the background, a crowd filled the room to hear Alexis present “What Endures,” a collection of [15] black and white photos that she began in 2019. The photos showcase the “enduring spirit of Black Women” and explore themes of survival, freedom and transcendence…”
Spring SouthTalks continue ‘Mississippi Voices’ theme
“At 5:30 p.m. Feb. 10 in Barnard Observatory’s Gammill Gallery, Nadia Alexis presents “What Endures.” The artwork of Alexis, a photographer, poet and creative-writing-concentration doctoral student at UM, are being shown in the Gammill Gallery through Feb. 18. The photographs in her series “What Endures” focus on the enduring spirit of Black women…”
‘Wild Imperfections’ moves womanism forward
Compiled and edited by Natalia Molebatsi, Wild Imperfections opens up, enhances and expands Black feminism in new and liberating ways, flattening geography and privileging solidarity.”
“…Addressing this spirit, Alexis dreams up a womanist utopia, where “assemblies/ of mothers & daughters sing & laugh / big & we all fly hand in hand … Our hair shimmies at the clouds / & makes songs with the wind. No rape, / no black eyes, no pockets or souls sucked / dry, no one to lead us away from this home.”
Spring 2021 Digital Exhibition: On Protest and Mourning
Our fractured nation continues to grapple with a long shadow of injustice—the state violence and police brutality perpetuated against Black bodies. While we engage in protest and uprising, how can we also mark the lives that have been irreparably damaged or lost? How do we create spaces for mourning? How do we honor our individual and collective grief? Utilizing a digital exhibition anchored by a dialogue series, CCCADI will explore these questions through the poignant and timely work of photographers and filmmakers whose projects simultaneously capture outrage against Black death as they affirm and center Black life.
Artists: Nadia Alexis, Vanessa Charlot, Dee Dwyer, Jon Henry, Terrence Jennings, Kareem Johnson
Semifinalist for 2020 Discovery Poetry Contest
“For over 60 years 92Y’s Discovery Contest has launched the careers of major poets like John Ashbery, Lucille Clifton, Mark Strand, Larry Levis, Mary Jo Bang, Solmaz Sharif and Diana Khoi Nguyen, to name but a few.”
Judges received nearly 1,000 manuscripts from around the world. Preliminary judges Diana Marie Delgado and Timothy Donnelly selected Nadia Alexis as one of the semifinalists.
As Part of Coronavirus Relief Effort, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit Gives Artists a New Platform to Sell Their Work
“The museum’s Emergency Rapid Response Fundraiser, for which the City Office of Arts, Culture and Entrepreneurship serves as a partner, was developed in response to the needs of artists’ whose livelihood is impacted by the outbreak. Selected artists can sell a single piece of art on the platform and split the profits of the sale evenly with the museum. Buyers will be responsible for arranging shipments. Works by Nadia Alexis, Sofia Henriquez, Lucas Foglia, Jim Chatelain, and others are currently available.”
2020 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award Nominee
WHAT ENDURES series nominated for 2020 photography award
Look Ahead: The hottest Seattle events for January 2020
Exploring Passages Within the Black Diaspora featured exhibition
“This promising-sounding show, curated by artist and scholar Berette Macaulay, shines a light on female-identifying photographers of the Black diaspora, including Nadia Alexis, Zoraida Lopez, Abigail Hadeed and others…”
Carr Center reopens in Detroit's Park Shelton
Nadia Alexis photograph featured in article
“The exhibition, curated by the Carr's resident artist Carrie Mae Weems -- artist, photographer and MacArthur "genius grant" winner -- along with art historian Anita Bateman"Beyond Space" mostly showcases the work of emerging artists from across the country who formed this year's class of Carr Independent Scholars.
But in an unexpected treat, the show also includes pieces by Weems, Jennifer Harge and Miatta Kawinzi, as well as Kresge Artist Fellows Carole Harris and the late David Philpot.
The scholar-artists are Nadia Alexis, Anita Bateman, Victor L. Ewing-Givens, Michelle May-Curry, Katrina Sarah Miller, Ricky Weaver and Andrew Wilson. Carr Senior Creative Director Erin Falker-Obichigha also has a video in the show.”
El espíritu que reside
Translated article text:
“Woman in White is the result of a surviving woman, Nadia Alexis, monochrome photographs of an artist born and raised in New York and daughter of Haitian immigrants. His work addresses the black female subject, who lives the harrowing reality of the high rates of state and interpersonal violence experienced in the United States.”
Publishers Weekly Hurston/Wright Awards Coverage 2019
“The winners of the Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers who included Trevor Lanuzza, fiction winner; Elinam Agbo, fiction honorable mention; Bernard Ferguson, poetry winner; Nadia Alexis, poetry honorable mention.”
One Night Stand Art Show Returns to Oxford
“The show was created by Erin Abbott Kirkpatrick—owner of Amelia Presents and an artist in her own right—as an alternative way for artists to display their work in a nontraditional setting. Each artist occupies a room at the motel and uses the environment to creatively display his or her work.
The show, which began in 2007, will have pieces from 15 different artists this year.”