Naima Yael Tokunow (née Woods) is an educator, writer, and editor, currently living in New Mexico. Her work (and life) focus on exploring black femme identity, kinship, and futurity. She is the author of three chapbooks, MAKE WITNESS, published in 2016 by Zoo Cake Press, Planetary Bodies, out from Black Warrior Review in 2019, and Shadow Black, selected by Pulitzer Prize winner, Jericho Brown for the Frontier Digital Chapbook Prize in 2020.

She is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a TENT Residency Fellow & has attended The Home School workshop in Miami. Currently, she is the 2022 - 2024 Nightboat Editorial Fellow. She proudly edits the Black Voice Series for Puerto del Sol. She also edits for Tupelo and reads for Nat. Brut and POETRY Magazine.  New work is published or forthcoming from bone bouquet, Bayou, Winter Tangerine, Nat. Brut, juked, Diagram, and elsewhere.  

She is blessed to be black and alive.