Considered “the Lauryn Hill of her generation”, this University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate’s skillful writing and soulful delivery will shake any room she speaks in. Ms. Mans began stringing rhymes together as a middle-schooler in Newark, New Jersey. in college, she began mentoring younger poets and teaching creative writing through the University of Wisconsin’s First Wave program. Her willingness to eloquently critique the state of feminism in Hip-Hop and address powerful topical poems about black life in America has elevated her to the next level. Ms. Mans is a writer who uniquely received a publishing deal at age 21. Selling copies of her book, Chalk Outlines of Snow Angels, worldwide, this young author’s accolades reach from the Broadway stage to the HBO screen. As a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., Ms. Mans is committed to using her “battle-bars” skills to bring social consciousness to the masses.

Aja monet is a Grammy-nominated Surrealist Blues Poet. She follows in the long legacy of poets assembling in social movements. Her poems are a work of gravity. At any given time you’ll hear the revolutionary spirit of Audre Lorde and the Last Poets, the feel of June Jordan, Amiri Baraka, Jayne Cortez and even the expressive ephemerality of a passing blue note. Organizing and activism manifest as part of her process toward liberation, with the poems, the music, and the art serving as a scribe of the time. Her first full collection of poems entitled, my mother was a freedom fighter is a testament to all mothers, women, and girls who struggle to live, love, and move freely in the world. Her debut poetry album, when the poems do what they do was nominated for a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album. She explores migration, spirituality, and femininity while centering Black resistance, love and the inexhaustible quest for joy. The songs throughout are insistent and unrelenting, with some reminiscent of jazz club virtuosity and melee while others act as a healing balm in gilead, moving like that of the call to intercessory prayer. Tonight aja monet performs with Mariah Davenport, Malcolm Javier Santiago, Justin Brown, Logan Richardson, and Benjamin Williams.

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.

Ms. Harris is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, with a PhD from Yale University and is an MFA student at NYU. Though intrigued by the scientific study of language as a linguist, as a poet she uses it as a creative probe to explore the emotional, spiritual, and relational realms of the human experience. Alysia is a two-time national spoken word champion and featured in the HBO Documentary Russell Simmons Presents: Brave New Voices.

Ms. Harris’ poems have garnished well over 2 million views on YouTube. Alysia is committed to the renaissance of courage and transparency. Her work uses the medium of words to explore the joys, sorrows, intricacies and passions of the human heart with uncompromising honesty.

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