publications
“In her debut chapbook, Miracle Thornton offers an imaginative portrait of black girlhood. The poems interrogate fraught intimate and communal spaces in an effort to understand how we come to know ourselves from outside of ourselves. From the pews of a church or shushing through the halls of a house in the night, Thornton’s poems are sensitive to the at once suffocating and wonderful complexities of love, the body, and home. Inspired in part by the Aesop fable “A Jackdaw and Peacock Feathers,” the figure of a dejected black bird haunts the page. The jackdaw acts as a mirror or a window which the speaker runs against and away from at turning points in her life. Tender and gilded, plucked thrums with a delicate force.”
Cover Art by Chuna A. Chugay
further recognition
1st Place in Poetry—Bennington Young Writers Awards
2nd Place in Poetry—Princeton University Leonard L. Milberg ‘53 High School Poetry Prize
YoungArts Honorable Mention in Writing
Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards American Visions & Voice Award, among others
Hollins University Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest Finalist
Albion College Charles Crupi Memorial Contest Finalist
Ohio Northern University Single Poem Contest Finalist