Publications

Nikki Ummel is a queer artist, editor, and educator in New Orleans. Nikki has been published or has work forthcoming with Gulf Coast, The Georgia Review, Black Lawrence Press, and others. She is the 2022 recipient of the Leslie McGrath Poetry Prize and 2023 recipient of the Juxtaprose Poetry Award for her manuscript, Bloom. Nikki is the co-founder of LMNL, an arts organization focused on readings, workshops, and residencies. She has two poetry chapbooks, Hush (Belle Point Press, 2022) and Bayou Sonata (NOLA DNA, 2023), funded by the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation. You can find her on the web at www.nikkiummel.com

Books & Chapbooks

• Bloom (Poetry – Chapbook), Juxtaprose, forthcoming. Winner of the 2023 Juxtaprose Chapbook Prize.
• Bayou Sonata (Poetry – Chapbook), NOLA DNA, Spring 2023. Funded by the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation.
• Hush (Poetry – Chapbook), Belle Point Press, Fall 2022.  Order Here!

Nonfiction

• “Chronic,” an excerpt from good body, Blue Earth Review, Winter 2022.
  *Honorable Mention for the 2022 Mockbee Prize at the University of New Orleans, judged by Patty Dann, who wrote, “In unflinching prose, [Nikki] deftly invites us into a painful world and insists the reader not look away. This is an essay not only about anguish but also about survival and endurance.”
  *Runner Up for Blue Earth Review‘s 2022 Flash Nonfiction Contest
  *Finalist for Harbour Review’s 2022 Washburn Prize
• “My Life in 25 Records,” The Daily Drunk Magazine, Kirsten and Friends Ultimate Summer Playlist Zine, Summer 2022.
  *Nominated for Best of the Net, CNF.
• “I Remember Everything,” Honorable Mention in the 2021 Words & Music Writing Competition, judged by Elizabeth Miki Brina.

Fiction

• “O Guillotine!,” Quagmire Magazine, Summer 2023.
  *Runner Up in Quagmire Magazine’s 2022 prose contest.
  *Honorable Mention, 2021 Words & Music Writing Competition, judged by Ravi Howard.
• “A Wake for One,” The Painted Bride Quarterly, Issue 102, Fall 2022.
• “Stage Five,” After Happy Hour Review, Contest Issue 1, Spring 2022.
  *Winner of After Happy Hour Review’s 2021 prose contest.

Poetry

• “Peonies” and “What is that Song We Sing for the Dead?,” forthcoming from Xavier Review.
• “Gratitude Mafia,” “Crying in Margaritaville While an Employee Takes My Picture,” “To E (the poem I should have read at your wedding),” “emergency rope,” and “March 1, 2022,” forthcoming from Ellipsis.
• “Pro,” Connecticut River Review, forthcoming. Finalist for the 2022 Connecticut River Review Experimental Poetry Contest, judged by Richard Deming.
• “mania,” Fugue Literary Journal, forthcoming. Finalist for the Fugue 2023 Annual Writing Contest, judged by Kaveh Akbar.
• What I Remember of Dauphine St.,” Daydreamer Anthology, forthcoming from Urban Ivy Books.
• “The Tale of Two Americas,” Stonecoast Literary Review, Issue 22, Winter 2025.
• “Lady Macbeth Speaks,” “mama’s abortion,” and “dog days,” Swing, Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2024.
• “For Masha,” LMNL Anthology, Volume 1, Fall 2024.
• “Seattle, 2023,” “I thought I heard a voice cry out,” and “Chrysopelea Speaks,” published in Chestnut Review’s The Art of Chestnut Review: Volume 1, Fall 2024.
• “to lamotrigine, on our 1 year anniversary” and “Saint Paul, Unpublished Letter, Recipient Unknown,” Pacifica Literary Review, Fall 2024.
• “Scattering Your Ashes on Lakes James,” Summer 2024. Finalist for the 2023 Bermuda Triangle Prize, judged by Michelle Bonczek Evory, Robert Evory, and Mike Dockins.
• “It was night when you died,” Chestnut Review, Summer 2024.
• “Sonnet for Your First Birthday,” “Guy,” “Hypomania,” “Happy Birthday, Dad,” “the swamp mallows lean & listen,” C O M P : an interdisciplinary journal, Summer 2024.
• “Birth Day,” Mom Egg Review, Summer 2024.
• “tenderness,” Verse of April: Digital Anthology of Homage to the Poets, Spring 2024.
• “April 29, 2021,” Contemporary Verse 2, Spring 2024.
  *Finalist for the 2022 Peatsmoke Poetry Summer Contest, judged by Erin Elizabeth Smith.
• “Sarasota, 2010,” In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy, edited by Lisa Fay Coutley, Black Lawrence Press, Spring 2024.
• “A Poem in Which My Grief Tries to Leave,” The McNeese Review, Spring 2024.
  *Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry
• “Indiana Summer,” “Fireflies for the first time,” and “my father’s toothache,” North Dakota Quarterly, Spring 2024.
• “come home, mama” and “First Quarantine Winter,” Salvation South, Winter 2023.
• “inheritance,” Ex-Puritan, Winter 2023.
  *Runner Up, Austin Clarke Literary Prize, judged by Billy-Ray Belcourt, who wrote “I love how formally ambitious this poem is. I love that it insists on its own mystery and possibility (for the answers are not really answers but whole realms of possibility). What the poet does include as text moved me deeply. I left with the desire to read more, to keep reading toward the feelings the poem nurtured inside me.”
• “Four Hours Before I Do,” Solstice Literary Magazine, Winter 2023.
• “Run Bitch Run,” Dream Pop Press, Winter 2023.
• “Client Psychotherapy Intake Form,” Crab Creek Review, Winter 2023.
  *Finalist for the 2023 Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize, judged by Nicky Beer.
  *Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry, 2023.
• “Rosaline Speaks,” Fine Print Press, Fall 2023.
  *Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry, 2023.
• “Pelvic Congestion Syndrome,” Olit, Fall 2023.
• “Self-Portrait as Auntie,” Identity Theory, Fall 2023.
• “____ trash,” Gulf Coast Journal, Fall 2023.
• “Aubade for the Sous Chef,” LIT Magazine, Fall 2023.
• “Former Champion of the Uneven Bars,” New Orleans Poetry Project, Fall 2023.
• “Helen Speaks,” Muzzle Magazine, Fall 2023.
• “On the Ferry to Algiers,” Sonnet Anthology, Belle Point Press, Summer 2023.
• “Grand Bay, Mississippi,” “Still Here,” and “Dream Sequence,” Trampoline Magazine, Summer 2023.
• “Altar” and “After the Flood,” Of Rust and Glass Queer Anthology, Summer 2023.
• “Sarasota, 2002,” Another Chicago Magazine, Summer 2023.
• “On the Six-Month Anniversary of My Ex’s Death, I Meet His Baby Mama,” “To the Brazilian Kids Who Zoom Bombed My First Book Launch,” “First Gay Crush (Ode to Alex Kelly from The O.C.),” and “Portrait of St. Paul with Martini Olives,” Epiphany Magazine, Summer 2023.
• “Star Carr, the Other Side of the Antler,” Bodies: A Preservation of Land & Self, Beaver Magazine, Summer 2023.
• “After the Flood,” Zine Project: A Queer/Trans Guide to Storms, Imagine Water Works, Summer 2023.
• “love as visigoth invader,” Sad Poems for Horny People, Volume 4, Troublemaker Firestarter, Summer 2023.
• “Self-Portrait of Sappho” and “Where the Earth Runs Red,” Queer Life, Queer Love: The Second Anthology, Summer 2023.
  *Finalists in the 2022 QLQL International Writing Competition.
• “1993 Tableau sans Lithium,” Arkana, Summer 2023.
• “Self-Portrait with the Opioid Epidemic,” Stoneboat, Summer 2023.
• “Airplane Hemmorhage,” Rogue Agent, Summer 2023.
• “Big BDSM Energy: A Ghazal,” “Gratitude Mafia,” and “Run,” Gold Room Anthology, Spring 2023. For sale at Blue Cypress Books.
• “Belly Button,” Verse of April, Spring 2023.
• “hurricane litany,” “Djupavik,” and “Hemphill, Kentucky,” Still: The Journal, Spring 2023.
• “Ophelia’s Curse: A Golden Shovel,” Crab Creek Review, Spring 2023.
  *Finalist for the 2022 Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize, judged by C. Dale Young.
• “Self-Portrait with Piano,” The Pinch Journal, Issue 42.2, Spring 2023.
  *Finalist for The Pinch Literary Awards, judged by Phillip B. Williams.
  *Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry, 2023.
• “Womanpower Unlimited (Jackson, 1961),” Rise Up Review, Winter 2022.
• “When he says we’re platonic,” The Globe Review, Winter 2022.
• “BREATHING PANELS,” Barrow Street Journal, Winter 2022. 
• “Walking My Niece Home,” Kelsay Books, Winter 2022.
  *Second Place, Women’s Poetry Contest 2022.
• “When My Water Broke, I Reached Down and Tasted Your Coming,” and “After Taking My First Dose of Lexapro,” Susurrus, Issue 5, Winter 2022.
• “Fragments from Quarantine” and “An Offering,” Channel Magazine, Fall 2022.
• “Room 122, the Memory Ward at St. Sebastian,” Love/Loss Anthology, Vita Brevis Press, Fall 2022.
• “Swamp Elegy,” Surging Tide Magazine, Fall 2022.
  *Finalist for Surging Tide Magazine’s 2022 Summer Poetry Contest, judged by I.S. Jones.
  *Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry, 2022.
• “A Lover of Starlight,” The Broken City, Fall 2022.
• “All the Trees of the Field Clapped Their Hands,” Painted Bride Quarterly, Issue 101, Fall 2022. 
• “Self-Portrait with My Sister’s Will,” “A Mother on the Eve of Her Child’s 15th Birthday,” and “Leave Taking: A Bop,” Black Fox Literary Magazine, Issue 23, Summer 2022.
• “Fantasy of Walking My Niece Home,” Academy of American Poets, online, Fall 2022.
  *Winner of the 2022 Andrea Saunders Gereighty Prize and an Academy of American Poets Award, judged by Mackie Blanton.
• “Double Mastectomy,” Naugatuck River Review, Issue 28, Summer 2022.
• “Eleven,” Rise Up Review, online, Summer 2022.
• “Former Champion of the Uneven Bars,” Midwest Quarterly, Vol. 63.4, Summer 2022.
• “And He Takes and He Takes and He Takes,” Ellipsis, Vol. 47, Summer 2022. 
  *Honorable Mention for the 2022 Vassar Miller Poetry Award, judged by Grace Bauer.
• “Fantasy of Walking My Niece Home,” Ellipsis, Vol. 47, Summer 2022. 
  *Winner of the 2022 Andrea Saunders Gereighty Prize and an Academy of American Poets Award, judged by Mackie Blanton.
• “Fragments on My Mania,” and “Photo of Our Parents, Circa 1992,” Ellipsis, Vol. 47, Summer 2022.
• “And He Takes and He Takes and He Takes,” Helix Magazine, online, Spring 2022. 
  *Winner of the Loraine McGrath Poetry Prize, judged by Benjamin S. Grossberg.
• “Fragments on My Mania,” After Happy Hour Review, Spring 2022.
  *Honorable Mention in After Happy Hour Review’s 2021 poetry contest.
• “The Fig Tree” and “The Memory Ward at St. Sebastian,” The Peauxdunque Review, Issue 6, Spring 2022.
  *Honorable Mentions in the 2021 Words & Music Writing Competition, judged by Aimee Nezhukumatathil.
• “Eleven,” “Womanpower Unlimited,” and “Anniston Burning,” The Peauxdunque Review, Issue 5, Fall 2021.
  *Honorable Mentions in the 2020 Words & Music Writing Competition, judged by Beth Ann Fennelly. 
  *“Eleven” was nominated for a 2021 Pushcart Prize in poetry.
• “Walking My Nephew Home,” Sky Island Journal, Issue 18, Fall 2021.
• “Sarasota, 2010,” Midwest Quarterly, Vol. 63.1, Fall 2021.
• “Saturday Morning on St. Claude Ave,” French Quarter Journal, online, Summer 2021. 
  *Winner of the 2021 Stanzas Poetry contest, judged by Skye Jackson.
• “Where Else Does My Mother Go When She Dream Walks?,” Ellipsis, Vol. 46, Summer 2021. 
  *Honorable Mention for the 2021 Vassar Miller Poetry Award, judged by John Warner Smith.
• “Meeting Aunt Nebbi for the First Time,” Ellipsis, Vol. 46, Summer 2021. 
  *Winner of the 2020 Vassar Miller Poetry Award, judged by Brad Richard.
• “Altar,” Ellipsis, Vol. 46, Summer 2021. 
  *Winner of the 2020 Andrea Saunders Gereighty Prize and an Academy of American Poets Award, judged by Emily Schulten.
• “The Things We Know,” Tilted House Review, Issue 3, Spring 2021. 
• “Where Else Does My Mother Go When She Dream Walks?,” Sky Island Journal, Issue 16, Spring 2021.
• “Altar,” The Academy of American Poets, online, Summer 2020. 
  *Winner of the 2020 Andrea Saunders Gereighty Prize and an Academy of American Poets Award, judged by Emily Schulten.
• “Selina, 1920,” Rise Up Review, online, Summer 2020.
• “Alchemy,” Hobart Pulp, online, Summer 2020.

Reviews and Interviews

• “Kaveh Akbar’s Pilgrim Bell Tolls for Language,” Cider Press Review 24.4, Fall 2022.
• “Laura Johnson’s Memento Vivere is a Reminder to Live,” Atticus Review, Fall 2022.
• “On Dominant Genes by SJ Sindu,” The Georgia Review, Summer 2022.
• “Review of David Greenspan’s One Person Holds So Much Silence,” PANK Magazine, Spring 2022.
• “Interview with Sandra Beasley,” Bayou Magazine, Winter 2021.
• “Bearing the Unbearable: A Conversation with Sandra Beasley,” The Adroit, Summer 2021.