Siaara Freeman

Siaara Freeman is a poet, playwright and arts educator, born and raised in Cleveland, where she calls herself the unofficial Lake Erie siren. She started writing at seven and slamming at 15 in the Brave New Voices competition, then slammed and coached for Columbus, Cleveland and Detroit. Her poems give the urban experience a real face instead of a caricature.

Her first full-length collection, Urbanshee (Button Poetry, 2022), retells fairy tales and myths through a modern, urban lens; it was a 2023 finalist for the Publishing Triangle's Audre Lorde Award and won a 2023 silver Benjamin Franklin Award for poetry. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she has been a Poetry Foundation incubator fellow, a Pink Door fellow, a Premiere Playwright and Catapult fellow at Cleveland Public Theatre and a Room in the House fellow at Karamu House. In 2023 Heights Arts named her its 11th poet laureate, the first to serve both Cleveland Heights and University Heights.

She is a teaching artist with the Center for Arts-Inspired Learning, co-founded the Outsiders Queer Midwest Writers Retreat and founded the Black Hogwarts Poetry Workshop.