Shakira Croce is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York.Leave It Raw (Finishing Line Press, 2020) is her debut poetry collection, featuring poems that explore the nuances of sexuality, marriage, motherhood, the arts, and ambition, speaking to relationships’ potential to hurt and heal. Each story offers bits of experience that provide an intimate glimpse of the intricacies of life. Croce’s poetry translations have appeared inBabelmagazine, and her poetry has been featured in several literary magazines and journals, including the New Ohio Review, Pilgrimage Press, HIV Here & Now,Transactions, Ducts, pioneertown, Permafrost Magazine, and Shark Reef. She was a featured reader in the Boundless Tales Reading Series, and she was a finalist in the Linda Flowers Literary Award competition.
Croce holds a Bachelor of Arts from Sarah Lawrence College and a Master’s in Public Administration from Pace University. Born in Geneva, New York in 1987, she grew up in Gainesville, Georgia and later studied in Florence, Italy. She currently works in New York City as Assistant Director of Communications and Public Relations at New York’s largest Medicaid Special Needs Health Plan, Amida Care.She lives with her husband, son, and two cats