Ngaio Simmons (she/her) is a Māori/pākehā spoken word artist and educator born and raised on the island of Oʻahu on Kānaka Maoli land in the unceded nation of Hawaiʻi. Now permanently residing in her ancestral homeland, Aotearoa, she is still writing about diaspora, identify conflict, and what it means to be Indigenous and queer in a world that repeatedly rejects both. She has been published in Contemporary Verse, Flux Hawaiʻi, Literary Hub, Ora Nui, Hawaiʻi Review, and Bamboo Ridge, among others. Her poem “Whānau” was recently featured in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series for AAPI month.