Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press | CavanKerry Press (March 4, 2025)

Paperback. Signed.

New.

A hybrid collection that explores the dual nature of water as both a destructive and healing force, mirroring the experiences of Black women and girls.

A hybrid collection of poetry and photography, Beyond the Watershed explores the various experiences of a Haitian American daughter and her Haitian immigrant mother. Nadia Alexis crafts a moving portrayal of generational trauma, domestic violence, survival, and reclamation, using stunning imagery drawing from the body, spirit, nature, and cityscapes. Alexis traces journeys to break free–documenting pain, making space for light, becoming a reckoning, connecting with spirit, and writing oneself into new seasons of safe waters, healthy love, and transformation. This vital debut affirms that there's "nothing like the thirst / of Black girls who believe in their own dreams," even as they navigate nonlinear paths to healing. "Sometimes the clouds speak to me / & tell me to look beyond the burning," the daughter declares, as she charts her own path forward.

Nadia Alexis is a poet, writer, photographer, and daughter of Haitian immigrants. Her writing is published in Poets & Writers, The Global South, Shenandoah, Wild Imperfections: An Anthology of Womanist Poems, and others.

She has earned numerous honors, including a mini-grant and Literary Arts Fellowship from the Mississippi Arts Commission, a Mississippi STAR Teacher Award, and recognition as the Poet of the Year Honoree of the Haitian Creatives Digital Awards. A fellow of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and The Watering Hole, she holds a PhD and MFA from the University of Mississippi.

She lives in Southwest Mississippi. She is currently the Literary Arts Instructor at the Mississippi School of the Arts, where she leads the department and teaches poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and playwriting.