Current Board
Editor-in-Chief
Takier George
Takier George (she/her) is an honors senior at Howard University studying as an English major with a creative writing concentration and a film minor from Arlington, Virginia. She was a part of the D.C. Youth Slam team from 2019 to 2021. Last year, two of her poems were published in Howard University’s Sterling Notes Literary Journal. Takier is the vice-president of the Sterling Allen Brown English now serves as the Editor-In-Chief of the Sterling Notes Literary Magazine. She is also a part of the Howard Chapter Sigma Tau Delta English Society and serves as its vice president. Takier is currently working on her first chapbook.
Managing Editor
Ari Adade
Ari Adade (she/they) is a senior pursuing a B.A. in Philosophy and a B.A. in English from Atlanta, Georgia by way of London, England. Their fiction and nonfiction prose often explores Black womanhood, queerness, and diasporic identity. Ari serves as the managing editor for Sterling Notes.
Editor
Maxwell Savage
Maxwell Savage (they/them) is a senior English major who serves as the president of the Sterling Allen Brown English Society and an editor in Sterling Notes. They are a big fan of Mott's fruit snacks, and being in the sun (for any reason, at any time).
Editor
Monica Mathis
Monica Mathis (she/her) is a senior Political Science major, English minor at Howard University from Broward County, Florida. Currently on the Pre-Law track, she plans to attend law school, intending to become a judge in the juvenile courts. This is her second year as a Sterling Notes Editor. Monica is also a proud Spring 2023 initiate of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated, Alpha Chapter, where she serves as the Political Action Chair. She is a fan of all things poetry, revolution, and R&B.
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Editor
Nyla Jones
Nyla Jones (they/she) is a senior English major, women, gender and sexuality studies minor and Mellon Mays Undergraduate Research Fellow. After graduating in Spring 2024 they plan on pursuing a PhD in the humanities.
Editor
Jay Boykins
Jay Boykins (they/them) is a senior English major and Journalism minor from Louisiana. Writing under the name Arlo Arctia, their specialities reside in poetry and prose, where they utilize introspection and life experiences to explore their emotions and curiosities. Currently, they have publishing credits in Querencia Press, and an upcoming publication in the next issue of Paper Paints & Poetry. They are pursuing a future career as an author, and concurrently, as an editor.
Editor
Kiarra Thompson
Kiarra Thompson (she/they) is a junior Film major, English minor from Montgomery, Alabama. They favor essay, prose, and poetry with a budding interest in scriptwriting and short story. Their favorite topics to center in both their nonfiction and fiction writings are Blackness, queerness, the female body, sex, and other personal ponderings. This is their first year as a Sterling Notes editor.
Editor
Layla Williams
Layla Williams (she/they) is a sophomore English major, education minor from New Jersey. This was her first year as an editor for Sterling Notes and they were grateful for the opportunity to read from all the wonderful writers at Howard. It has inspired her to be more active in her own writing. She enjoys writing poetry about spirituality and self and dreams of one day publishing her work.
Editor
Dalijah Beasley
Dalijah Beasley (she/her) is a junior English major from Denison, Texas. This was her first year as an editor for Sterling Notes, and her first year as treasurer for SABES. Lijah discovered her passion for writing at the young age of 12 and decided to pursue editing as a career when she got to college. She enjoys writing poetry, playing the saxophone, and listening to music. She hopes to one day become an established author of many novels and children’s books!
Advisor
Sean Pears
Sean Pears's academic research focuses on literature and rhetoric in the United States, particularly the aesthetics and politics of Reconstruction. His articles have appeared or are forthcoming in English Literary History, The Arizona Quarterly, and The Emily Dickinson Journal. He has also published reviews and essays in Jacket2, The Denver Quarterly, Fanzine, and elsewhere. His edited collection of essays about poetics at the University at Buffalo, At Buffalo: The Invention of a New American Poetry (2020), was published by Lake Forest Press.
Advisor
Kimberly Collins
Kimberly A. Collins is the author of a book of poems, Bessie’s Resurrection (Indolent Books, 2019), and a book of essays, Choose You! Wednesday Wisdom to Wake Your Soul (CreateSpace, 2017). She attended Spelman College and holds a BA from Trinity University, a MA in American and African American literature from Howard University and MFA in poetry from Spalding University. Collins’s poems have appeared in Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Black Magnolias, Berkeley Poetry Review, and the Women Artists 2017 Datebook, and in the anthologies Theorizing Black Feminisms: The Visionary Pragmatism of Black Women, Fingernails Across the Chalkboard: Poetry and Prose on HIV/AIDS from the Black Diaspora, The Nubian Gallery, Revise the Psalm: Work Celebrating the Writing of Gwendolyn Brooks, and 50/50: Poems and Translations by Womxn Over 50. Collins is a Callaloo Fellow, and teaches English and creative writing at Morgan State University in Baltimore. Her poem, “Remember My Name” has become a staple of annual Domestic Awareness Month observances.
