Christell Victoria Roach

Christell Victoria Roach is an Emmy-nominated poet and performer from Miami. As a descendant of its Black pioneers, she writes about the Blues, the Caribbean diaspora, and many different types of love—embracing the Southern Gothic and the tropics. She was a 2022–2024 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and a 2025–2026 YoungArts Fellow with the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. Christell is pursuing her Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing at Florida State University. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Miami after graduating from Emory University with a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing and African American Studies. Her recent work has been published in Poetry Magazine, The Atlantic, The Academy of American Poets, Obsidian Literary Journal, Scalawag, The Miami Rail, and elsewhere. She essays, archives, and builds memory maps across the South through OTOWN, her digital archive and interactive app showcasing communal histories in historic spaces.