# DaMaris B. Hill

DaMaris B. Hill is an American writer, scholar, and educator. She is the author of Breath Better Spent: Living Black Girlhood, A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing, The Fluid Boundaries of Suffrage and Jim Crow: Staking Claims in the American Heartland, \Vi-zə-bəl\ \Teks-chərs\ (Visible Textures), and other books. Her digital work includes “Shut Up In My Bones”, a twenty-first-century poem. Hill is a Professor of Creative Writing, English, and African American Studies at the University of Kentucky. She is a member of The Wintergreen Women Writers Collective

## Early life and education

Hill was born in Charleston, West Virginia, to Damaris J. Lowe and Winton M. Hill III. Both of her parents are clergy in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Much of Hill's creative work references her upbringing and family. Many of her books attend to public and familial histories.
In 1999, she earned her Bachelor of Arts in English from Morgan State University. In 2005, she earned her Master of Arts in English from the same institution. In 2011, she earned a graduate certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University of Kansas. In 2012, she earned her Ph.D. in English (creative writing) from the same institution.
Hill has also earned several professional certificates. She earned a certificate in Holocaust Educators Network from City University of New York and Lehman College. She earned a certificate in Research Administration 101 through KU Research and Graduates Studies at the University of Kansas. She earned a certificate in Teacher Consultant Certification through the National Writing Project at Towson University.

## Career

Hill has worked for several higher education institutions as a faculty member and/or administrator, including Sojourner-Douglass College, Goucher College, the Lied Center of Kansas, the University of Kansas, The Project on the History of Black Writing, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, the University of Kentucky, and others. She has held scholar-in-residence appointments and fellowships at Harvard University and Brown University.
Hill began working in education and instruction as early as 1997 supervising reading instruction for pre-school and early elementary programs. She was a reading and English literature teacher and trainer with the Baltimore City Public School System. In 2004, she joined the second group of teachers for Digital Harbor High School and became a teaching consultant with the National Writing Project.
In 2008, she moved to become a professional writer. While at the University of Kansas, she served as a teaching assistant for the Department of English, a special collection coordinator for the Project on the History of Black Writing, and the inaugural program assistant for the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities. In 2012, she served as a research fellow for the Department of English.
In Spring 2013, she was a visiting assistant professor for Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s English Department. In Fall 2013, she came to the University of Kentucky as an assistant professor of Creative Writing, English Literature, and African American Studies. Since then, she has served in multiple roles at the institution. In 2015, she was a scholar-in-residence for Race and Teaching at the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT). In 2018, she served again as a scholar-in-residence for CELT and had a parallel appointment as a faculty fellow for the Center for Graduate and Professional Diversity Initiatives. In 2019, she was promoted to associate professor. In 2020, she co-founded and was interim director of the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies while also serving as the interim director of the African American and Africana Studies Department. In 2022, she was promoted to full professor.
She has also served as affiliated faculty for the Department of Writing, Rhetoric and Digital Media; the Center on Equality and Social Justice; the Department of Gender and Women's Studies; the Committee on Social Theory; the American Studies Program; and African American and Africana Studies.
In Fall 2022, Hill was a visiting fellow in Race and Ethnicity for the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. During the 2023 to 2024 academic year, Hill is serving as a fellow and scholar-in-residence for Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research.
Hill has also lent her service to national and international organizations, such as The Watering Hole Poetry, MacDowell, Tidal Basin Review, Lyric Theater and Cultural Arts Center, the National Council of Negro Women, Barnes-Findley Foundation, and the African American Heritage Festival in Baltimore.

## Research interests

Hill’s major fields of interest are Black feminism and examinations of intersectional identities, digital cultures, theories associated with remix, historical archives, and public narratives. Influences to her writing include Saidiya Hartman, Toni Morrison, and Deborah Willis. Their theories of critical fabulation, rememory, and envisioning the Black body largely impact Hill's work.

## Awards and recognition

* First American poet signed by Bloomsbury Publishing
* 2023 Rona Jaffe Foundation Fellow at The Castle w/ Civitella Ranieri Foundation
* 2022 Visiting Faculty Fellowship Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America
* 2020-2021 Igniting Research Collaborations Grant Funding from the Office for the Vice President of Research at the University of Kentucky “Stimulating Higher Education Leadership Progression - an Institutional Framework for BIPOCs” ($30,950 research grant)
* 2018 Girls of Color: Voice and Vision Grant Award with Kentucky Foundation for Women
* 2018 Arts Envoy to eSwatini/Swaziland with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Exchange Programs, United States Department of State
* 2016 Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University, Inaugural Poet-In-Residence
* 2016 The MacDowell Colony, Fellow
* 2015, 2017 Kentucky Foundation for Women, Artist Enrichment Grant Awardee
* 2015 Bread Loaf Writers' Conference for Poetry in Erice, Sicily
* 2014 Bread Loaf Writers' Conference for Poetry in Middlebury, Vermont
* 2013 The Paden Institute, Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College, City University of New York and State University of New York at Plattsburg
* 2012-2015 The Watering Hole Poetry Fellowship
* 2003 Creative Writing Award for Short Fiction - Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation
* 2003 Short Fiction Award Finalist for College Writers - College Language Association