Ms. Howard is a Harlem raised writer and actress. Learning the balance of writing for personal expression and performing for a theatre audience, she discovered the world of performance poetry at the age of thirteen. In 2009, she was named the inaugural NYC Youth Poet Laureate by the Office of the Mayor where she published her first collection of poems, CLUTCH. Additionally, her collaboration with filmmaker Lisa Russell on the short film “Biracial Hair”, based on her original poem of the same title, won an Emmy for Outstanding Advanced Media Interactivity. As a Yale University graduate, Ms. Howard continues to stay committed to the uplift of those peoples too often marginalized and not often enough celebrated. Her work is in praise of all of our beauty and all of our ugliness too.