When I was growing up, more often than I heard “Once upon a time,” I heard “In the beginning.”  I learned about creators and magic, about valuing elders and history, and about love that changes everything. I always had a natural leaning toward arts and language. I started drawing, painting, writing, storytelling, and scripting at a young age.

 

As I grew, I learned about all the different stories of “the beginning” and of the relationship between creating and storytelling. I wrote more, experienced spoken word poetry and slam competition, and I noticed underserved community schools’ co relationship with less arts and single stories. I became a secondary English Language Arts Teacher (ELA) and now I’m an education consultant. What that means is I help teachers, districts, and home school parents create and use ELA curriculum that centers Black, Indigenous, and authors of Color (BIPOC) and the historical perspectives of the diasporic Black experience. I want to help my community educate ourselves and move ourselves forward so colonial mindsets can no longer cause harm.

 

I’m transitioning out of the classroom and spending more time on my work as a poet and artist who can perform poetry at your event or create personalized poetry art for your home or office. I am an addition to your library of Black books and if you are an artist, I want to collaborate with you. I do this work because art heals. I want to do my part to entertain, to soothe, to enlighten, to connect, and to archive our collective experience. 

 

Finally, I’m an eclectic culture advocate and that means I use blogging, video, and social media to rate and review BIPOC media, books, art, social life and community, giving my opinion on if it glitters or is gold. I love speaking to groups in a smaller workshop or large event space about Black history and cultural topics.

 

My first self-published poetry book The Risk to Bloom went on sale in March 2014, carrying the same title.

In 2015, I wrote the poem “Black Future” and my friend, hip hop artist and activist Jabee, turned the poem into an album: In the Black Future There’s a Place So Dangerously Absurd.  The outtakes, or B sides, of that album were titled Juneteenth and released on that day 2016.  The official album released in August of the same year.

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I have a master of arts degree in literature and currently reside in Guatemala City.

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