Safia Elhillo, Sudanese by way of D.C., is the author of The January Children y Home Is Not a Country, and co-editor of the anthology Halal If You Hear Me. Her work has appeared in Poesía magazine, El Atlántico, and The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, among others, and has been translated into several languages. In the award-winning collection Girls that Never Die (One World), Elhillo reinvents the epic to explore Muslim girlhood and shame, the dangers of being a woman, and the myriad violences enacted and imagined against women’s bodies. Drawing from her own life and family histories, as well as cultural myths and news stories about honor killings and genital mutilation, she interlaces the everyday traumas of growing up a girl under patriarchy with magical realist imaginings of rebellion, autonomy, and power. She writes a new world: women escape their stonings by birds that carry the rocks away; slain girls grow into two, like the hydra of lore, sprouting too prolifically to ever be eradicated; and circles of women are deemed holy, and thus, protected. Ultimately, Girls That Never Die is about looking to freedom and questioning [what if i will not die], [what will govern me then].