"Poet. Cultural worker. Storyteller."

In Moments as They Are, Triston Dabney offers a radiant debut that gathers the sacredness of everyday Black life into a luminous archive of tenderness, grief, queerness, and spiritual becoming. Moving through the stages of Childhood, Adolescence, Adulthood, and Blessing, these poems weave personal memory with communal history, giving voice to the unsung rituals that raise us.

 

Dabney writes with clarity and care, honoring Black familial inheritance, interrogating masculinity, and embracing queer joy with reverence. Each poem is a small benediction, inviting readers to notice the divine in the ordinary and to hold space for healing. Moments as They Are is an offering of witness, a spiritual testimony, and a quiet revolution of care.

 

Perfect for readers of Lucille Clifton, Jericho Brown, Danez Smith, and Hanif Abdurraqib, this collection reminds us that to live is to bless, and to be seen is to become whole.

Triston Dabney is a poet, cultural worker, and undergraduate Oprah Winfrey Scholar from Baltimore, Maryland. A Best of the Net nominee and finalist for Button Poetry's Chapbook Contest, he has received scholarships and support from Stockton University, Sphinx Moth Press, and the Hudson Valley Writers Center. His work appears in Obsidian, BreakBread Magazine, The Elevation Review, and other literary spaces committed to Black and queer poetics.

His debut collection, Moments as They Are (Fernwood Press, 2026), traces a journey through boyhood, memory, spirituality, and survival with lyrical precision and radical tenderness.

Triston hopes to pursue an MFA and a career in higher education, where he can continue to nurture emerging voices and build literary spaces rooted in care, community, and cultural truth.