Y Not Put On?

Javon Johnson is an Assistant Professor and Director of African American & African Diaspora studies and holds an appointment in Gender & Sexuality Studies in the Interdisciplinary, Gender, and Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He received his Ph.D. in Performance Studies with a certificate in Gender Studies and Cognate in African American Studies from Northwestern University in 2010. Dr. Johnson’s scholarly interests include performance, blackness, African American literature, black pop culture, slam and spoken word, black feminist theory, black queer theory, masculinity studies, black sexualities, and ethnography.Dr. Johnson’s first book, Killing Poetry: Blackness and the Making of Slam and Spoken Word Communities (Rutgers University Press 2017), unpacks some of the complicated issues that comprise performance poetry spaces and argues that the truly radical potential in slam and spoken word communities lies not just in proving literary worth, speaking back to power, or even in altering power structures, but instead in imagining and working towards altogether different social relationships. His second project, The End of Chiraq: A Literary Mixtape (Northwestern University Press (2018) is a co-edited book that critically creatively explores Chiraq (a name that is an amalgamation of Chicago and Iraq as a way to call to the violence of certain parts of Chicago) as a space and as a term. Additionally, Dr. Johnson has published in Text & Performance Quarterly, Liminalities, QED: A Journal of Queer Worldmaking, The Root, Huffington Post, and others.Currently finishing up his first book of poems, Dr. Johnson is a creative scholar who has mounted exhibitions at the California African American Museum where he managed the History Department. A renowned spoken word poet, he is a three-time national poetry slam champion, a four-time national finalist, and has appeared on appeared on HBO’sDef Poetry Jam, BET’s Lyric Café, TVOnes Verses & Flow, The Steve Harvey Show, The Arsenio Hall Show, United Shades of America with Kamau Bell on CNN, and co-wrote a documentary titled Crossover, which aired on Showtime, in collaboration with the NBA and Nike.

Suzi Q. Smith is an award-winning artist, activist, and educator who lives in Denver, Colorado. She has been performing poetry throughout the United States for over a decade. 

Imani Cezanne is a writer, performer and teaching artist from San Diego, CA. As a nationally touring poet, Imani has been invited to share her work at poetry venues, colleges, universities, conferences and festivals across the nation. Imani has won 5 Grand Slam Championships, placed in the top 10 at 7 World Poetry Slams and has shared original work on three major network television shows. Imani has forthcoming work in Fugue, Nimrod, and Crab Creek Review, and was recently named a finalist for the 2020 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. In March she became the 2020 Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion for the second time.

Alyesha Wise is a published poet, teaching artist & TEDx speaker from Camden, N.J. Currently residing in LA, she is the co-founder of Spoken Literature Art Movement, an organization providing poetry education and extensive programming for poets - and a teaching artist for Street Poets, Inc., an organization serving juvenile injustice-involved youth with mentorship and arts programming. Alyesha has been featured on platforms and in publications such as OWN TV, Huffington Post, Bustle, Afropunk, PBS, POPSUGAR, Buzzfeed and more. Other collabs include the ACLU of Southern California, The Nantucket Project, Brave New Films and the Google Interstellar Project. Ron Howard once wrote about Alyesha's work, "Very Powerful."

Pages Matam is an international artist, writer, event coordinator, & educator from Cameroon, Central Africa, currently residing in Washington D.C. He is Director of Poetry Events for Busboys and Poets, Callaloo Fellow, and author of the award winning full length collection The Heart of a Comet (Write Bloody, 2014). A polyglot National poetry slam champion and National Fair Housing Alliance Cultural Ambassador, he has been featured on various renowned platforms and venues such as the NAACP, The Guardian & Google Voices, Huffington, Okay Africa, Macy’s, the Kennedy Center, the Apollo Theater, BET Lyric Cafe, TV One’s Verses & Flow, and more. During the day he is turning poems into scripts and collaborating on creative and holistic healing spaces. At night (and also during the day) He is a proud gummy bear elitist, professional hugger, anime fanatic, kink and bdsm enthusiast and plantain connoisseur, who is interested in three things: securing a capitalism free bag, minding my own business, and making whiteness and white people uncomfortable .  www.pagesmatam.com 

The award-winning poet, and storyteller, Ebony Stewart, has a powerful voice and a drive to make an impact. She is a woman of many talents, she wears the hat, but there is a greater focus put on her shoes. In addition to being an international touring performance artist, Ebony is also a Sexual Health advocate, published author, and striving community artist social worker. Her work speaks to the black experience, with emphasis on gender, sexuality, womanhood, and race, with the hopes to be relatable, remove shame, heal minds, encourage dialogue, and inspire folks in marginalized communities.