Nate Marshall is from the South Side of Chicago. He is a Cave Canem Fellow whose work has appeared in Poetry magazine, New Republic, Indiana Review, and elsewhere. He is coeditor of The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop.Marshall has won the Hurston/Wright Founding Members Award and the Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award. He is a visiting assistant professor of English at Wabash College, a member of the poetry collective Dark Noise, and also a rapper.

Marshall's poetry offers an insider's perspective that asks the reader to parse the sociopolitical systems that imperil black lives—not through abstract ideology, but through authentically rendered eyes: "every kid that's killed is one less free lunch,/ a fiscal coup. welcome to where we from.