Poet, Playwright, Literary Scholar, & English Professor

A Cave Canem poet, playwright, literary scholar, and English professor (emerita) from Philadelphia, Olga’s continued growth in faith and love for the arts inform her writing, which provides a room of her own where she can invite others in for conversation—probing or light, spontaneous or measured, a dance between minds that is always useful. Fascinated by what distinguishes individual voices in a polyphonic world, she writes poems that explore characteristics, moments of change or definition, narratives which help to shape a unique, authentic, and Christ-centered self. The poems appearing here were written in response to a single question: what do you have in your house? Recovering from a strange set of illnesses including cancer over the past four years and consequently navigating a completely different lifestyle, Olga found herself asking this question in an effort to remember “who I am, adopt an attitude of resilience, maintain faith, and shun the fear that comes with seemingly having more questions than answers.” The poems are together an act of resilience, a choice made to salvage “what I have in order to be and not just survive.”

Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, Olga’s award-winning poems appear or are forthcoming in many literary journals and anthologies including Ekstasis, Spirit Fire Review, Litmosphere, Reformed Journal, Relief, Kweli, Agape Review, The Windhover, ONE ART, Sunlight Press, The Write Launch, Ariel Chart, Grit and Grace, Channel, Cathexis Northwest Press, and Poems from Pandemia – An Anthology.

Holding a Ph.D. in Literary History and Culture from the University of Rochester, Olga has written articles on drama, poetry, and cultural memory that appear in The Journal of African American History, The North Star, and Emory University's “Following the Fellows.”