Marlanda Dekine is a poet. She is the author of Thresh & Hold, winner of the 2021 New Southern Voices Poetry Prize from Hub City Press, and the audiobook collection I am from a punch & a kiss. The first Poet Laureate Emeritus of Georgetown County Libraries, Dekine is an alumnus of the Obsidian Foundation UK and a dynamic performer.

Her honors include the Castle of our Skins Shirley Graham DuBois Creative-in-Residence and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the South Carolina Arts Commission. Dekine’s poetry is published or forthcoming in The Offing, Swamp Pink, Poetry, Orion, Callaloo, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day and anthologized in This Is the Honey and What Things Cost.

A licensed social worker, she founded Dekine Cultural Strategies and Speaking Down Barriers. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Converse University, an MSW from the University of South Carolina, and is pursuing an MDiv at Union Theological Seminary as a James H. Cone Scholar. She lives with her wife, Natalia.