VS Announces New Cohosts: Ajanaé Dawkins & Brittany Rogers

As announced in the summer of 2021, Franny Choi and Danez Smith are stepping aside as the cohosts of the VS podcast after five fabulous seasons and one mighty mini-series in VS Presents: Roll Call.

From Season 6 onward, VS will be in the capable hands, mouths, and brains of Ajanaé Dawkins and Brittany Rogers.

Those names might sound familiar, as Dawkins and Rogers were first introduced to many VS fans with their own Roll Call episode “Roll Call: Radical Literary Friendships," which they crafted alongside collaborator Maurisa Li-A-Ping and producer Camille Mojica. Now let’s get to know the cohosts a little before their inaugural season begins airing in fall 2022.

• Ajanaé Dawkins is a poet, performer, and educator. Dawkins has published work in The Rumpus, The EcoTheo Review, The BreakBeat Poets: Black Girl Magic, and The Offing, and among others. Her honors include a Tinderbox Poetry Editors Prize, and a finalist placement for a Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize from Cave Canem. Dawkins is the 2022 Duncanson Artist-in-Residence at the Taft Museum, as well as a recipient of fellowship from The Watering Hole and the Pink Door Writing Retreat. She is the Theology Editor for The EcoTheo Review, a Blackburn Fellow as an MFA candidate at Randolph College, and an MDiv candidate at Methodist Theological School of Ohio.
   
• Brittany Rogers is a poet, mother, educator, and Detroiter. Rogers has work published or forthcoming in Mississippi Review, Vinyl Poetry and Prose, The Offing, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, and Tinderbox Poetry; her work has been anthologized in The BreakBeat Poets: Black Girl Magic and “Best of the Net.” Her honors include fellowships from VONA, The Watering Hole, Poetry Incubator, and Pink Door Writing Retreat. She is editor in chief for Muzzle Magazine and a MFA candidate and Blackburn Fellow at Randolph College. 

For those who are attending the AWP conference in Philadelphia, check out @PoetryFound and @VSthePodcast for details on when to stop by the Poetry Foundation booth (#1030) to meet the new cohosts.

You can find VS anywhere you get your podcasts, and can stay up-to-date on what’s moving us @VSthePodcast on Twitter.