Sonia Farmer engages with the book as a creative object, cultural artifact, and educational tool, centralizing  text and narrative in her inter-disciplinary practice. She writes to disrupt and investigate existing narratives as a way to question their inherent power structures and expose alternative marginalized voices. She builds platforms and homes for these narratives via handmade books, letterpress printing, printmaking, handmade paper, and performances.

She is the Founding Director of Poinciana Paper Press , a Center for Writing, Book Arts & Publishing, located in Nassau, The Bahamas. A major collaborator in the literary and visual arts communities in the region, Poinciana Paper Press facilitates programming aligned with its mission by providing opportunities to engage with the form of the book and its allied crafts of writing, bookbinding, letterpress printing, handmade paper, printmaking, book design, and calligraphy. This includes workshops, community outreach and engagement, exhibitions, publications, and residencies.

Her artist books have received accolades, including the Holle Award for Excellence in Book Arts for A True & Exact History. These artist books and chapbooks can be found in various public and private collections and libraries, including the Dawn Davies Collection, The Baha Mar Art Collection, The Colleen Lewis Reading Room at Fresh Milk in Barbados, the University of Missouri Libraries, and in the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia.

She is the author of Infidelities (Poinciana Paper Press, 2017) which was longlisted for the 2018 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and The Best Estimation in the World (Poinciana Paper Press, 2019). She has also self-published several chapbooks. Her poetry has won the 2011 Prize in the Small Axe Literary Competition & been shortlisted for the 2020 Montreal International Poetry Prize; has been selected for the anthologies The Sea Needs No Ornament (Peepal Tree Press, 2020) and the forthcoming Writing for Our Lives anthology (Peekash Press, 2024/2025); and has appeared in various journals including Stand Magazine, PREE, tongues of the ocean, Small Axe, Poui, and The Caribbean Writer. She has read her work at various literary festivals including at the NGC Bocas Literary Festival in Trinidad and the Blue Flamingo Literary Festival at the University of The Bahamas.

Her artwork has been exhibited internationally, regionally in the Caribbean, and locally in The Bahamas, including at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, The Current, Hillside House, Doongalik Studios, and the Central Bank of The Bahamas Art Gallery, where her piece Elect Ya Tings received an Honorable Mention in their 32nd Annual Art Competition and Exhibition. She has embarked on several residencies, including at the Fresh Milk art platform in Barbados, and at The Current: Baha Mar Gallery & Art Center.

As an Obermann Fellow of the Graduate Institute for Engagement and the Academy, education and collaboration are major components in Sonia’s outreach. In the classroom, she aims to break down the barriers between writer, publisher, and reader to help her students take complete ownership of their narratives. She has led classes and workshops in various international art spaces and institutions, as well through Poinciana Paper Press.

She holds a BFA in Writing from Pratt Institute where she won the thesis award for an outstanding collection of poetry, and an MFA in Book Arts from the University of Iowa Center for the Book.

CV available upon request.

Contact Sonia at sonia [at] poincianapaperpress.com.