Liberian poet and journalist Aria Deemie, a rising literary voice and two-time Press Union of Liberia award winner, is set to make her debut in the global poetry scene with the release of Humans for Sale, a searing chapbook confronting the harrowing realities of human trafficking. The cover of her forthcoming collection offers a chilling yet beautiful introduction to what promises to be one of the year’s most important literary works.
Humans for Sale will be published this December as part of Kumi Na Moja: New-Generation African Poets, a prestigious chapbook box set curated by the African Poetry Book Fund in collaboration with Akashic Books. Deemie, already recognized for her courageous reporting on human trafficking — for which she was named Liberia’s Trafficking in Persons Reporter of the Year (2021) and Health Reporter of the Year (2022) — now turns her finely honed pen to poetry, weaving testimony, survival, and memory into unflinching verse.
Every poem in Humans for Sale bears the weight of firsthand experience and professional insight. Deemie, who holds a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work and is currently completing her Master’s in Clinical Social Work, writes with a dual sensibility: that of the meticulous journalist and the empathetic healer. Her work does not observe from a distance — it stands in the heart of the storm, where trauma collides with truth.
The cover, a vivid and unsettling piece by renowned Ethiopian artist Mulu Legesse, reflects the emotional gravity of Deemie’s subject. Designed by Sohrab Habibion and Aaron Petrovich of Akashic Books, the cover imagery acts as a portal into the lives so often rendered invisible.
Adding a resonant voice to the collection, Egyptian-American poet and pediatrician Sherry Shenoda writes in the chapbook’s preface:
“In Humans for Sale, Liberian poet Aria Deemie offers a journalist’s clear-eyed analysis, along with a poet’s attention to the intricacies of human relationships, and arrives at an integral whole. As though written in flight from great danger, Deemie turns her poet’s vision to the weighty issue of human trafficking. In terse, urgent language, she speaks truth into the emptiness of violation, grief, and predation visited on victims.”
Deemie’s poetry spares no illusions. In poems like “Mrs. Gray,” she writes:
“She takes the fruits before they even ripen to the waterside market to sell the way she takes children to the auction ground to be taken abroad.”
In “Eve’s Lament,” she poses an impossible question from the edge of despair:
“I asked self—should I live dying, or should I die trying?”
Through Humans for Sale, Aria Deemie demands readers confront uncomfortable truths — about survival, complicity, and silence. This chapbook is not merely a literary achievement; it is a clarion call for awareness and action.
As the cover finds its way into readers’ hands, it comes with an invitation: to ready the heart for a body of work that tells what is often left untold — and to listen carefully to the voices that, for too long, have been drowned out.
Humans for Sale will be available this December through the African Poetry Book Fund and Akashic Books.
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