Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah is a Ghanaian American poet, editor, and educator living out the diaspora in Boston, Massachusetts. They are both Black & alive. Born in 1993, Emmanuel is Boston’s newly appointed poet laureate, and the school librarian at the Joseph Lee School in Dorchester. In the past, Emmanuel has served as a high school English teacher at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, and as a teaching artist at organizations such as the Massachusetts Literary Education and Performance Collective, the Cambridge Arts Council, Northeastern University, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. The pursuit of joy, and that which sustains life, is essential to Emmanuel’s creative practice, and to their practice of living. Emmanuel’s chapbook “not without small joys” (published by Game Over Books Press) explores the centrality of joy as an animating force, especially in the face of human suffering. In his free time, Emmanuel enjoys hot carbs, brightly colored chapbooks, and the long sigh at the end of a good book.