Amber Flame is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, activist, and educator. A former church kid from the Southwest, Flame’s work has been published in diverse arenas, including Def Jam Poetry, Nailed Magazine, Winter Tangerine, The Dialogist, Split This Rock, Black Heart Magazine, and more. In writing, Flame explores spirituality and sexuality, cross-woven with themes of grief and loss, motherhood and magic, and the interstitial joy in it all. A 2016 and 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee, and Jack Straw Writer Program alum, Amber Flame’s first full-length poetry collection, Ordinary Cruelty, was published in 2017 through Write Bloody Press.
Flame was a recipient of the CityArtist Grant from Seattle’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs to write, produce, and perform the original one-person play, Hands Above the Covers. In early 2018, Flame co-curated the art installation Black Imagination at Core Gallery in Seattle. Flame had the first solo exhibit in 2019 with a project entitled ::intrigue:: 8, a multimedia installation that featured musical compositions inspired by the text of eight different poets with original video content as well as text from the original poems.
Amber is currently making a film from the newest poetry collection, supported by a grant from the Black Cinema Collective, while the third poetry collection is a semi-finalist for YesYes Books Pamet River Prize. In addition to creating change as Program Director of Hedgebrook, Flame continues to work as a writing instructor in community and for currently and formerly incarcerated women and youth while writing flash horror fiction, performing music with Last of the RedHot Mamas, making art, and raising an awesome kid. Amber Flame is a queer Black dandy mama who falls hard for a jumpsuit and some fresh kicks.