Allison Joseph lives, writes, and teaches in Carbondale, Illinois, where she is part of the creative writing faculty at Southern Illinois University. She serves as editor and poetry editor of Crab Orchard Review, moderator of the Creative Writers Opportunities List, and director of the Young Writers Workshop, a summer writers' workshop for teen writers.

Other poems by Allison Joseph in Verse Daily:
March 30, 2018:   "Show Off" "Come flaunt your imperfections..."
October 14, 2016:   "Multitudes" "I'm a big city girl and a small town woman..."
December 4, 2015:   "Sidewalks" "Why should I be the one who walks afraid..."

Books by Allison Joseph:

Other poems on the web by Allison Joseph:
"Little Epiphanies"
Five poems
Two poems
Four poems
Twenty poems
Two poems
"On Being Told I Don't Speak Like a Black Person"
"Running While Black"
Five poems

Allison Joseph on Twitter.

About Confessions of a Barefaced Woman:

"Confessions of a Barefaced Woman is the perfect title for Allison Joseph's latest and finest book. She is a force to be reckoned with in these direct, powerful poems. We know where she stands and why, and she welcomes us on the journey through these pages with humor, humility, and grace. She is a master of poetic form and technique, which she artfully integrates into her frank, honest, confiding voice. Whether the subject is African-American hair, the purchase of a first bra, junk food, or liars, or people such as Rick James, Dorothy Parker, Grace Jones, or that Other Allison, she tackles them all here with refreshing clarity and candor. If she has any more confessions, I want to hear them."
—Jim Daniels

"Allison Joseph's Confessions of a Barefaced Woman is memoirist poetry, a journey of complicated girlhood to nuanced womanhood. The speaker grows from being a 'Pesky Little Sister' to a woman who is in a 'marriage / saved by frozen foods'; from a child learning penmanship to a woman writing poems. Confessions is full of laughter, generosity, intellect, and deep questions about the trap of female beauty, particularly African-American beauty. Allison Joseph knows there is strength in vulnerability—her barefaced poems glow with 'no second skin for [her] to wipe away.'"
—Denise Duhamel