about

Patricia Ndombe is a Congolese American poet, essayist, online Christian writer, and artist-scholar who hails from North Carolina, USA. She earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing with a focus in Poetry from North Carolina State University and currently pursues a Ph.D. in Africology and African American Studies at Temple University. Some of her most notable work include her poems as a semi-finalist for the 2024 Kinsman Quarterly Iridescence Award; “We have been waiting,” in the 2023 1619 Speaks Anthology of African American Poets; and “Ekeko” in the 2019 Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation and Multilingual Texts. Patricia also has accepted and/or published poems in the African American Review, Kalahari Review, The Health Humanities Journal of UNC-Chapel Hill, and the WINDHOVER Literary & Art Magazine.

As primarily a poet, Patricia’s poetry contemplates (1) African ancestry, Blackness, and African culture; (2) Christian theology, Christian living/faith, and the Black Church; and (3) poetics and the life of the poet. Her poetry is inspired by [1] the 1960s and 70s Black Arts Movement; [2] Afrocentricity; and [3] African Futurism, Afrofuturism 2.0, and the Black Speculative Arts Movement.

Her last name, Ndombe, hails from her father and the Sakata people (or, the Basakata) of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Central Africa, along with maternal ancestry from the Balanta and Brame peoples of Guinea-Bissau in West Africa.

The name means Black.