Jarita Davis is a poet and fiction writer who earned a B.A. in classics from Brown University and both an M.A. and a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. She was recently the writer in residence at the Nantucket Historical Association and has received fellowships from the Mellon Mayes program, Cave Canem, and Hedgebrook. In addition, she was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Travel Research Grant as well as Neiheisel Phi Beta Kappa Award. Her work has appeared in the Southwestern Review, Historic Nantucket, Cave Canem Anthologies, and is forthcoming in the Crab Orchard Review.

....Her most recent project, There Should Be More Water, is a cycle of poems that focuses upon Cape Verdean and Cape Verdean-American culture. These poems, which are both narrative and lyrical, present a romantic sense of longing, nostalgia, and quiet reflection. She has worked closely with linoleum-cut print artist, Alexandra Huttinger, and together they have collaborated to create a series of prints and poems, also under the title of There Should Be More Water. Thus far, this collaboration has been exhibited in galleries in Lafayette, LA, Washington, D.C. and Nantucket, MA.

....Jarita Davis was raised in North Haven, CT. Both of her parents are from Massachusetts, and her mother, who is first generation Cape Verdean-American grew up in New Bedford, MA, a city with a strong Cape Verdean population.

.... Her love for classical literature and languages was fostered at Choate Rosemary Hall and Brown University, and after finishing her undergraduate work, she moved to Rome, Italy, where she taught English as a foreign language and began work on a collection of short stories. She continued to write short fiction as a graduate student in the creative writing program at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette where she studied with Ernest Gaines, George Clark, and Darrell Bourque.