Madari Pendas is a writer, poet, painter, and cartoonist. She received her MFA from Florida International University, where she was a Lawrence Sanders Fellow, and won the 2021 Academy of American Poets Prize, judged by Major Jackson. Her work has appeared in Craft, Smokelong Quarterly, The Masters Review, Oyster River Pages, PANK, and more. She is the author of Crossing the Hyphen (2021) and She Loves me, She Loves me Not (2025).