Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley is not the Ben Kingsley best known for his Academy Award-winning role as Mahatma Gandhi. This Ben is a touch less famous, having not acted since his third-grade debut as the Undertaker in Music Man. He belongs to the Onondaga Nation of Indigenous Americans in New York. Affrilachian author and Kundiman alum, Ben’s first, second, and third books debut 2018, 2019, and 2021: Not Your Mama’s Melting Pot (University of Nebraska Press), Colonize Me (Saturnalia Books), and Dēmos (Milkweed Editions). Peep his recent work in The BreakBeat Poets: LatiNEXT, Native Voices: Honoring Indigenous Poetry, The Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Oxford American, Poetry, & Tin House. He is an assistant professor of poetry and nonfiction in Old Dominion University’s MFA program.
