So first, the facts. I was born and raised in the Deanwood-Fairmount Heights area. I learned to read by the time I was three years old, and I started writing creatively very early in my life. I was educated in the DC public school system until 1993, when I graduated from Dunbar and moved to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California. After USC, I went to Atlanta, where I worked as a writer, an editor, a secretary, a waitress, a bartender, a sales clerk, and a data entry operator. I wrote a lot of poems and experimented with a few stories and screenplays, but I didn’t take any of them seriously until I moved to Boston in 2001 to study creative writing at Emerson College.
In 2003, I came back to the DC area for good, and I worked as a desktop publisher before opening my own business, Phenom Community Media www.pcmonline.biz, in 2004. That spring, I finished my thesis and officially graduated from Emerson. That summer, I did my first year at Cave Canem Poetry Workshop and Retreat www.cavecanempoets.org, which led to my first publication in a recognized literary journal. In 2005, I began teaching English at Prince George’s Community College www.pgcc.edu. I also started teaching community writing workshops for children, teenagers, and senior citizens in Ward 7. Through those activities, I hooked up with the Ward 7 Arts Collaborative. In 2006, I won a Young Artists grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities to support Fresh Ideas www.fresh-ideas.org, a poster and creative writing contest I created in 2004 to encourage students in far Northeast to pursue socially conscious arts.
Today, I still teach at PGCC, and I just became the faculty advisor for Reflections, the student literary magazine. I did my second of three years at Cave Canem last summer. Locally, I have performed at the Honfleur Gallery, Macy’s in Prince George’s Plaza, the Folger Theatre, the Pratt Free Library, and during several Arts Collaborative events. In 2007, I rejoined my childhood church, Contee AME Zion www.conteeamez.org. I teach Sunday School and help run the multimedia ministry, and I also provide communications support to an affiliated health initiative, the People Before Profit Community Healthcare Project www.peoplebeforeprofit.org.
Look for “Anatomy Remix: Tapping the Cactus” under my blogs at www.myspace.com/saturnsdaughter.Upcoming Appearances:
February 5, 2008 – Great Streets Conversations with Don Murray (Panelist). McKinley Technical High School. 12 noon. Sponsored by the Humanities Council of Washington, DC.
February 21, 2008 – “Flowin by the River” spoken word/karaoke night (Co-host). Marvin Gaye Park/Riverside Center. 7 pm. Sponsored by Ward 7 Arts Collaborative.
February 28, 2008 – Cave Canem poets at UDC. University of the District of Columbia, Building 41 A- 03. 7 pm. Sponsored by UDC.