Cameron Awkward-Rich

Image of Cameron, a black transmasculine person in a black sweater and glasses, standing with arms crossed in front of a brick wall

Cameron Awkward-Rich is the author of two collections of poetry: Sympathetic Little Monster (Ricochet Editions, 2016) and Dispatch (Persea Books, 2019). His third collection, An Optimism, is forthcoming in October 2025 from Persea Books. Cameron’s creative work can be found in POETRY, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere, and has been supported by fellowships from Cave Canem, The Watering Hole, and the Lannan Foundation.

Cameron’s critical/scholarly writing can be found, among other places, in Signs, Trans Studies Quarterly, and American Quarterly. His book The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment (Duke University Press, 2022) was awarded the Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies and the Alan Bray Memorial Book Award for best book in LGBTQ literature and cultural studies.

Presently, he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.