Writers of Color

As a writer, I create work that critically examines the individual and collective realities of the human experience. Most often my observations are expressed in surrealist and abstracted forms, whether in poetry or prose. I am inspired by the anxieties of our contemporary existence that are further complicated by fears that some linear narratives of history fail to be inclusive. I am also begging to write in sub-genres such as digital literature/humanities, drama and non-fiction prose.

My writing process is primarily inquiry-based and propelled by an unrelenting curiosity about what it means to be human. As a writer, I ascribe to the literary concept popularized by Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison known as “rememory,” a means of rendering a particular group experience – one that emphasizes the historical social, cultural, economic and political realities that extend into the present. By reclaiming past events as a form of memory, history becomes an expression of the conscious mind. Thus, rememory permits the literary artist to retell the story of the past using her imagination. In 2008, I relocated from Baltimore, Maryland to Lawrence, Kansas in order to study the work of Toni Morrison, particularly rememory as philosophy and aesthetic practice. In addition to earning my terminal degree at the University of Kansas, I studied with writers such as Natasha Trethewey, Lucille Clifton, Yusef Komunyakaa, Thomas Glave and Monifa Love-Asante. In kind, my development as a scholar/writer has been enhanced by the institutional support of the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Callaloo Literary Writers Workshop, Furious Flower Poetry Center, Urban Bush Women, The Project on the History of Black Writing and others.