Stephani Booker

Stephani Maari Booker of Minneapolis writes prose and poetry for the page and for performance that reflect her multiple marginalized identities: Black, lesbian, lower-class and nerdy.

She is a recipient of a 2024 McKnight Fellowship for Writers Administered by the Loft and a 2024 Minnesota State Arts Board Creative Individuals Grant.

Stephani has creative work in journals such as St. Paul Almanac, Astral Waters Review, Minnesota Women’s Press, Wanderlust, Unfit to Print, Rigorous, Aphelion Webzine, Lavender Review and Serendipity.

Anthologies and collections that feature her work include These Black Bodies Are…A Blacklandia Anthology (Romaine Washington, editor; Inlandia Institute, 2023); Queer Voices: Poetry, Prose, and Pride (Andrea Jenkins, John Medeiros and Lisa Marie Brimmer, editors; Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2019); The Future of Us: An Anthology edited by Charlotte Bailey & Florence Okoye; Jalada 02: Afrofuture(s); and Queenies, Fades, Blunts: A Zine (The Lonely Londoners, 2014).

In 2024, under her Athena Persephoni business moniker, Stephani produced and performed in two shows entitled “Strange Inequalities: BIPOC & Working Classes vs. Near-Future Automated Oppression” with talent from BIPOC LGBTQIAA+ arts organization RARE Productions and funding by the Minnesota State Arts Board. In 2025, she produced and performed two monologues, “An Abbreviated History of My Hair” and “Strange Inequalities—Adjudicated,” at the Minnesota Fringe Festival. She has also performed for Power to the People Stage at Twin Cities Pride, presented by RARE Productions, and MN POC Pride.