Robin Coste Lewis is the author of Voyage of the Sable Venus (2015), a finalist for the National Book Award. Her work has appeared in various journals and anthologies, including The Massachusetts Review, Callaloo, The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, Transition, and VIDA. Lewis earned her BA from Hampshire College, her MFA from NYU's Creative Writing Program, and an MTS degree in Sanskrit and comparative religious literature from Harvard Divinity School. A Cave Canem fellow, a Los Angeles Institute of the Humanities fellow, Lewis was also awarded a Provost's fellowship in the Creative Writing & Literature PhD Program at USC. Other fellowships and awards include the Caldera Foundation, the Ragdale Foundation, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Summer Literary Seminars in Kenya. She was a finalist for the International War Poetry Prize, the National Rita Dove Prize, and semi-finalist for the "Discovery"/Boston Review Prize and the Crab Orchard Series Open Poetry Prize. Lewis has taught at Wheaton College, Hunter College, Hampshire College and the NYU Low-Residency MFA in Paris. Born in Compton, California, her family is from New Orleans.