Growing up around hills and lakes in New Jersey, northwest of New York City, Buffy Aakaash has moved between small towns, big cities, and rural queer communities for the last almost forty years, farming, writing, growing food, and doing healing work. Engaged in poetry most of his life, he is inspired by the beings both human and non-human in the many places he has lived, visited, and explored-New Mexico high deserts, several big cities, the US west coast, Tennessee's hills and hollers, as well as extensive travels in Mexico. Currently, he resides in Vermont's Green Mountains with his four-legged fellow traveler/hiker, Bodhi the pug.Aakaash's poems have been published by Sweety Cat Press, New Feathers, Main Street Rag, The Brussels Review, and numerous others. He authored the 2022 chapbook, Untangling the Knots, which was nominated for the Vermont Book Awards. His poem "The Beauty Before Us" won the Poetry Society of Vermont's 2022 Marion Gleason Memorial Award. In 1994 Aakaash received an MFA in playwriting from Columbia University. In addition to being a writer, he freelances as a media designer and manuscript editor. Some of his previously published poetry can be viewed at www. BuffyAakaashPoetry.com.
