Born & raised in New Orleans, Bernardo Wade tries at poems, catches elbows on the court, & rides his bike around Bloomington, IN, because IU funds his present period of studying with others. Previously the Editor of Indiana Review, he now serves as Assistant Editor and Poetry Editor for Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. He’ll soon be wandering the Bay Area/Stanford this fall as a Wallace Stegner Fellow. Though he’s published in a bunch of literary journals no one in his family has ever heard of, they remain proud of him, especially when they are featured in the poems. His first full-length poetry collection is forthcoming from Lookout Books of UNC-Wilmington. He's infatuated with Ed Roberson's question, "Can you O.D. on life?”
Awarded the 2021 Puerto del Sol Poetry Prize, the 2023 Third Coast Poetry Prize, and the Academy of American Poet's Vera Strube Poetry Prize, he has words in The Nation, Crazyhorse, Black Warrior Review, Guernica, Cincinnati Review, Southern Review, Ecotone, & elsewhere.
