Thomas Kneeland is an Afrocuban poet and scholar whose research explores ancestry, ecological memory, and the effects of intergenerational trauma. He is the author of We Be Walking Blackly in the Deep. A child of the Deep South, Kneeland’s work reaches deep into the soil of his grandmother’s backyard for roots that run along the Mississippi, down to the Gulf, and onto the red clay shores of Cuba. Kneeland was recently nominated for Sundress Publications’ 2024 Best of the Net and is a 2022 Frontier Poetry Global Poetry Prize finalist. His publication credits include Modern Language Studies Journal, Southern Humanities Review, The Amistad, The Rumpus, South Florida Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Kneeland holds an MFA in poetry from Butler University, an MA in ministry from Wesley Seminary, and a BA in English writing from DePauw University. Recently, he was named a 2025 Emerging Scholar by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education.