Krystle May Statler

Krystle May Statler (she/her) is a Black-multiracial woman, interdisciplinary poet, artist, and designer, with an MFA from Otis College of Art & Design. She is the author of Prayer for Relief, released on the fifth deathiversary of her brother’s murder by the Inglewood Police Department. Prayer for Relief has since won first place in both the nonfiction category of relationships–family for The Book Fest Awards and the grief category for the International Impact Book Awards.

In June 2025, Krystle completed the Certificate Training in Community Storytelling, hosted by The Hearth.

From October 2024-March 2025, she led the inaugural Chapbook Design Instructor for the Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC). This program is expected to return in Fall 2025...more to come!

In 2023, she graduated from the IPRC’s Poetry Portfolio Program and her anti-memoir, Doing Time: Letters to His Daughter, was long listed for the Disquiet International Literary Program prize where she received a partial scholarship to attend the 11th Annual Program in Lisbon, Portugal.

More of her work is featured in Home and Away: Poetry, Stories & Art, Advice to 9th Graders, Epiphany Magazine, Fugue Journal, Fourteen Hills, Sixfold, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Poetry from Instructions, poetry.onl, 1455's Movable Type Issue 7 & 9, The Santa Fe Writers Project Quarterly, Cultural Weekly. Krystle's poetic-visual hybrid, Losing Blood, was a finalist for the 2022 CRAFT Hybrid Writing Contest & the 2021 CAAPP Book Prize. 

Her design experience is diverse, with an emphasis on poetry and hybridity while also designing logos, marketing materials, children’s books, and more. Over the last eight years, she's worked as a freelance designer for self-publishing clients, the Book Production Manager for World Stage Press, a graphic designer for the Community Literature Initiative, and a typesetting assistant for Otis Books/Seismicity Editions. Krystle's latest design adventure is being the book layout designer for Mama’s Kitchen Press. 

When she’s not artisting or designing books, Krystle can be found volunteering with the The Grief House as the Fundraising Chairperson and Epiphany Magazine as a poetry reader, working as the Director of Operations at The Pathfinder Network, or nurturing life in Portland, OR with her partner Kevin, their plant babies, alongside oodles of loved ones.