Michele Evans is the author of the debut poetry collection purl (Finishing Line Press, 2025), which was nominated for the 2025 Maya Angelou Book Award. She is a fifth-generation Washingtonian (D.C.), writer, teacher, and adviser for Unbound, an award-winning Northern Virginia high school literary magazine. This Watering Hole Fellow studied English at Smith College, King’s College London, and the Graduate School at the University of Maryland. Her poems have appeared in Gargoyle, Mid-Atlantic Review, Porcupine Literary, Spoken Black Girl Magazine, Welter Magazine, Zora’s Den, and elsewhere. She lives online at awordsmithie.com.

Composed over a 10-year period, februaries celebrates the contributions and achievements of Americans often showcased only during Black history month. Inspired by the African American Read-In, an event established in 1990 by the Black Caucus of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the poems in februaries pay homage to literary legends Maya Angelou and Alice Walker alongside lesser-known gems Dr. Joanne V. Gabbin and E. Ethelbert Miller. februaries also draws inspiration from an assembly of established and emerging writers with ties to the DMV (Washington, D.C. area) region. The poems within this chapbook honors the idea that Black history should be “celebrated, appreciated, or narrated” well-beyond the annual 28-day celebration.