Sagirah Shahid is a Black Muslim poet, arts educator and performance artist. She was one of four poets selected by the City of Minneapolis to participate in "Nicollet Lanterns", a collaborative public arts project which transformed original poems into functional sculptural lanterns. Sagirah received a 2015 Loft Mentor Series Award in Poetry, a 2017 Minnesota Center for Book Arts mentorship award, and participated in the Twin Cities Media Alliance’s Our Space is Spoken For public arts and performance fellowship in 2018. Her debut collection of poetry "Surveillance of Joy" is forthcoming from Half Mystic Press.