CYNTHIA DEWI OKA was born in Bali, Indonesia. When she was 10 years old, her family migrated to Vancouver, Unceded Coast Salish Territories. In 2012, she and her son migrated to the Greater Philadelphia Area, Lenni Lenape Land.

She is the author of A Tinderbox in Three Acts, a Blessing the Boats Selection chosen by Aracelis Girmay, published by BOA Editions in 2022; Fire Is Not a Country (2021) and Salvage (2017) published by Northwestern University Press; and Nomad of Salt and Hard Water, first published by Dinah Press in 2012, with a second edition of new and revised poems published by Thread Makes Blanket in 2016.

A 2021-2022 Poet in Residence at the Amy Clampitt House in Lenox, MA, she has been awarded the Leeway Foundation’s Transformation Award, the Tupelo Quarterly Poetry Prize, and the Fifth Wednesday Journal Editor’s Prize in Poetry. She is an alum of the Voices of Our Nations (VONA) Workshop and the Vermont Studio Center, and earned her MFA as a Holden Minority Scholar at Warren Wilson College. She serves as Editor-in-Chief of Adi Magazine and Poetry Editor at Kweli Journal.

Cynthia has taught creative writing at Bryn Mawr College and New Mexico State University, and literary/arts organizations including VONA, Murphy Writing of Stockton University, The Blue Stoop, and Asian Arts Initiative, with which she partnered in the aftermath of the 2016 election to offer Sanctuary: A Migrant Poetry Workshop for immigrant poets based in Philadelphia. She has served as a visiting Distinguished Writer at Widener University, and conducted workshops and readings at Babson College, Claremont McKenna College, The New School, New York University, Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, New York University, Swarthmore College, Williams College, Vassar College, and others.

As a creative facilitator, she has offered workshops for a wide range of organizations including Community Building Art Works, FreeWrite Prison Writing Group, Women Writers in Bloom, Women’s Mobile Museum, and Training for Change. She has also worked with young poets in high schools across New Jersey as a Geraldine R. Dodge Poet and a Lambda Literary LGTBQ Writer-in-Schools. In 2021, she led a week-long intensive workshop for emerging Indonesian writers in collaboration with the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (UWRF) and the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa.

Cynthia has performed in various venues across the US and internationally, including at the Bowery Poetry Club, The Nuyorican, The Brooklyn Rail, the Langston Hughes House, Nick Virgilio Writer’s House, Noyes Art Garage, Woman Made Gallery, the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, the Philly Pigeon, Busboys and Poets, The Laura Flanders Show, the Dodge Poetry Festival, Split This Rock Poetry Festival, Kweli International Literary Festival, Hobart Festival of Women Writers, Collingswood Book Festival, Festival Internacional de Poesia de la Habana in Cuba, and the UWRF in Indonesia.

For fifteen years, Cynthia worked as an organizer, trainer, and fundraiser in social movements for gender, racial, economic, and migrant justice. In 2020, she transitioned out of the nonprofit sector to focus on her artistic practice. As an immigrant and former young single mother with working-class roots, her aesthetics are guided by her core values: self-determination, collaboration, and attention to the peripheral. She writes to be free.

Cynthia is represented by The Speakeasy Project and is currently based in Los Angeles, Unceded Gabrileño Tongva and Gabrileño Kizh Territories.