about.

Aris Kian (she/her) is a Houston enthusiast and student of abolition. Her work centers the landscape and emotional-political climate of her home city. Her debut poetry collection Heartless Architecture won the 2027 Miller Williams Poetry Prize, selected by editor Patricia Smith. It will be published in Spring of 2027 with the University of Arkansas Press. She previously served as the 2023-2025 Houston Poet Laureate and received her MFA from the University of Houston as an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow. Kian is a current member of Smoke Slam alongside LeChell “The Shootah”, R.J. Wright, Blacqwildflowr, and Sherrika Mitchell, coached by Ebony Stewart, which ranked #1 at the 2025 Bigfoot Poetry Slam and #1 at the 2024 Southern Fried Poetry Slam.

In addition to receiving a 2025 Ruth Lilly-Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship, she is one of 25 recipients of the 2023 BIPOC Artist and Network Fund Awards and the 2022 recipient of the Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize in Creative Writing for Students with Service to the Houston Literary Community. She is a 2019 Pushcart nominee, a 2020 Best of the Net finalist, a 2021 Crystal Wilkinson Creative Writing Prize finalist, a 2022 New Voices Contest finalist with Frontier Poetry and a 2026 Tennessee Williams Festival Poetry Finalist. Kian was also co-granted a 2023-2024 Creative Catalyst award from the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund with collaborator Sonny Mehta, with Riyaaz Qawwali.

Aris Kian performing on stage at WOWPS 2023. Photo by @littleboxofrandom on IG.
Houston Poet Laureate 2023 Ceremony shot. Photo by Houston Public Library.
Aris Kian performing on stage at WOWPS Qualifier in 2020. Photo by @missmvr on IG.
Family and mayor at Houston Poet Laureate induction 2023. Photo by Houston Public Library.
2nd Place WOWPS 2023. Photo by @littleboxofrandom on IG.
Houston Poet Laureate ceremony. Photo by Houston Public Library.
#1-4 Womxn Poets of WOWPS 2023. Photo by @littleboxofrandom on IG.
Houston Poet Laureate Emeritus, Youth Poet Laureate, Aris Kian, and Texas Poet Laureate Emeritus at Houston Poet Laureate induction 2023. Photo by Houston Public Library.
Coogslam Team at CUPSI 2019.
Friends surrounding me and posing at Houston Poet Laureate induction 2023.
Smoke Slam Poetry Team at Southern Fried Poetry Slam 2023.
Aris Kian performing on stage at WOWPS 2023. Photo by @littleboxofrandom on IG.
Aris Kian at Slam Mania II with WAN Poetry 2019. Photo by Christopher Diaz.
Aris Brown posing in the woods with backlighting . Portraits for the Fall Magazine. September 20, 2023
Smoke Slam team women performing at SoFried 2024.
Smoke Slam Poetry Team holding 1st place check and trophies at SoFried 2024.

Since December 2020, she has self-sold and distributed 250+ copies of her fifteen-poem chapbook blac•ademic and received a Poets & Writers grant to create and perform a visual EP launch and reading in June 2021.