Photo Credit: Jes Nijjer

THOMAS KNEELAND is a Pushcart-nominated poet and scholar whose creative and academic research explores ancestry, ecological memory, and the effects of intergenerational trauma in Black, Afro-Latine, and Afro-Indigenous communities. Recently named a 2025 Emerging Scholar by The EDU Ledger, Thomas is the author of the chapbook, We Be Walkin’ Blackly in the Deep. 

Thomas has received recognition, grants, and fellowships from Frontier Poetry, Best of the Net, IU Indianapolis Arts and Humanities Institute (IAHI), Central Indiana Community Foundation (CICF), and the Indianapolis Arts Council. His poems are forthcoming, or have been published, in Prairie Schooner, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Southern Humanities Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

Previously, Thomas taught high school English in the Indianapolis Metropolitan Area before joining the writing faculty at the 2024 Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America (LEDA) Aspects of Leadership Summer Institute at Princeton University. He is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Anderson University. 

Thomas received his B.A. in English Writing from DePauw University, his M.A. in Ministry from Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University, and his MFA in Creative Writing from Butler University.