Duriel E. Harris, bonrn in 1969 in Chicago, is a graduate of Yale College and holds an M.A. from the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University. She is the author of but there are miles (1999), a limited edition chapbook, and her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including the Crab Orchard Review, fyah and Spirit and Flame. She is also working on several other manuscripts including her first volume of poetry, a work for stage, and a memoir, This Far.
A writer/performer, she is the winner of the Unity IV People of Color Poetry Slam and the Eighth Annual Gwendolyn Brooks Writer's Conference Poetry Slam. She has been featured at numerous venues in New York and Chicago including: The Knitting Factory, Dixon Place, Corneila St. Cafe, and Columbia University (NY); and Blue Chicago, the South Shore Cultural Center, the Expo for Today's Black Woman, the Chicago Cultural Center, and the Guild Complex (Chgo). In addition to her solo performances, she has produced several collaborative pieces incorporating dance, music and visual art.
Ms. Harris is a Cave Canem fellow, co-founder of Black Took Collective and a Poetry Editor for Obsidian III: Literature in the African Diaspora. Currently a doctoral student in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Ms. Harris is the recipient of the 1999 Chicago Bar Association Charles Goodnow Memorial Award for Poetry.