Sloan Asakura - Poet, Memoirist | Brown University MFA Candidate

                              people ask me about form

        
      



                            what is form to you?

          what does form mean to you?



                                                        certainly not this 

                                          almost shape         we might instead

                            question recognition        see ourselves here

                                      do you see me?         where do i stop?

                                                  where does form begin?

                                                 a shadow is a bleeding thing

                                                   and even that is familiar
Sloan Asakura - Poet, Memoirist | Brown University MFA Candidate


























                       can you tell me about form?

                       its story?






Sloan Asakura
(she/he/they)
poet / memoirist / other & else
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‘22 Periplus Fellow
‘23 McCormack Writing Center (previously Tin House) Resident
‘25 McCormack Writing Center (previously Tin House) Summer Workshop Alumnus
‘26 Blue Mountain Center Resident
‘26 candidate for their MFA in Literary Arts at Brown University


Winner of the 2024 CRAFT Memoir Excerpt & Essay Contest
Winner of the 2025 Brown University Frances Mason Harris Prize
Winner of the 2026 Brown University Edwin Honig Memorial Award



Asakura’s work is informed by conversations with trees, meditations on hereditary & post memory, parallelisms & unreliable realities, the inhabited body as landscape, and contemplations forward into radical joy. 




Interview with Mommy’s El Camino
Interview with Archipel




Contact me here







Publications


TriQuarterly (forthcoming)

    designs of survival

Rawhead (forthcoming)

        war in the window

SunSpot Lit (forthcoming)

        ! check the rear seats ! 

Zócalo  (forthcoming)
   
         ICE eats the neighborhood

The Rumpus (forthcoming)
       
         prognosis of sound

BRINK (forthcoming)
    
        signs of life 

2024 CRAFT Memoir Excerpt & Essay Contest

       Excerpt of “Window” | Judged by Donald Quist

Tupelo Quarterly

       August 6th, 19_5 | apparition | death in the family

Joyland

       Excerpt of “Descent”

Zone 3
   
       blue house full of blue bodies | a fire on wind can make any brush blush

The Lantern Review

       until mourning

O:JA&L

       altar | she wears me whenever i wear her jeans | kamikaze bugs look like my hands when i’m holding onto him | in our house | oyster shells can sing if they are empty

Rogue Agent

       self as girl

Rogue Agent

       march

The Mantle

       over coffee, with evaporated milk

Rigorous

       new life | lepidoptera | hiroshima | on daughters | first love

Jeopardy Magazine

       [s]kin    









we’ll call this the “i”