In Volume Six: Chapter Three of the podcast, we welcome Poet, Spoken Word Artist, and Author Alyssa Michelle for her third appearance on the program. Alyssa, based in Albany, New York, is a mother, motivational speaker, and creative writing consultant who has authored three poetry collections: Growing Pains, The Awakening, and Blooming Season.

In our conversation, we ease in with her road trip R&B playlist, then dive into a discussion about introversion, energy, growth, and the personal work behind Alyssa’s creative evolution.

We revisit her start as a young writer who turned to poetry for safe expression and trace how her writing has shifted from chronicling trauma to embodying confidence, healing, and self-empowerment. She opens up about the importance of honoring her past without staying bound to it — particularly in her performance work, where she now feels called to reflect joy, strength, and renewal on stage.

We also discuss her latest book, Blooming Season, a personal collection of 22 poems that represents, essentially, both a closing of one chapter and the quiet beginning of another. Plus, Alyssa shares her experience participating in the LA Times Festival of Books and offers insight into her new role as a creative writing consultant, supporting writers across a wide range of genres.

Alyssa brings honesty, warmth, and a quiet wisdom that makes this conversation both comforting and energizing, and is why she is one of our favorite guests to converse with.

Contact Alyssa:
Instagram: @poetress_alyssa
TikTok: @poetress_alyssa

Recorded Spoken Word Performances Featured Include:

Maya Mayor – Perfect
Instegram: @mayamayor

Lyrical Faith – Lay My Edges
Instagram: @lyricalfaithpoetry Website: lyricalfaithpoetry Our Conversations with Lyrical Faith: First and Second

Shawn William – Tired
Instagram: @iamshawnwilliam

Alyssa Michelle – Solitude Thoughts
Alyssa Michelle – Mis-Education of the Introvert

This week on the program, we welcomed Poet, Scholar, Educator, and Author of the poetry collection "What Had Happened Was" - Dr. Therí Pickens . Dr. Pickens is a Professor of English at Bates College, where she teaches courses in African American and Arab American literature, disability studies, philosophy, and literary theory. In our conversation, we explore the intersections of Blackness, disability, poetry, and presence — and how she weaves these into both her creative and academic work.

We begin with a fun round of word association that touches on everything from “Mad Blackness” to ‘90s R&B and Uno (yes, the card game), before diving into her creative history — from being the “young nerd” with a backpack full of books to her early dreams of publishing poetry.

Dr. Pickens shares how she began seriously honing her craft as a poet in 2017, using poetic forms to guide and discipline her creativity. We discuss how her scholarly work in disability studies, particularly Black Disability Studies, informs her poetry — and how she challenges dominant frameworks like “mutual constitution” in understanding Blackness and disability. She offers insightful distinctions between impairment and disability, and how structural barriers—not bodies—create inaccessibility.

Contact Dr. Pickens:
Instagram: @tapphd2010
Website: tpickens.org

Recorded Spoken Word Performances Featured Include:

Ariana Brown – Supremacy
Instagram: @arianapbrown Website: arianabrown.com

Yaw – Ancestral Ghosts
Instagram: @kingyaw_

Dasan Ahanu – Conversation With God
Instagram: @dasanahanu Website: dasanahanu.com

Ayanna Florence – Boy Calls Me Pretty
Instagram: @poetnextdoor

Ifrah Hussein – Tell Us
Instagram: @ifrahhussein

In the premiere Chapter of Volume Six, we welcomed Chicago-born and based Educator, Poet, Writer, Spoken Word Artist, and Dancer, Sunshine Lombré .

From her early start in ballet at the age of three to her decision to pursue dance and poetry professionally, Sunshine walks us through her artistic evolution—how physics gave way to poetry, how Craigslist led to one of her first choreography gigs, and how an unexpected injury became a spiritual and creative turning point.

We talk about the interplay between poetry and movement—how dance, especially fem-centered forms like burlesque and belly dancing, can carry memory and emotion in ways language sometimes can't. Sunshine opens up about how embracing her sensuality and femininity transformed not only her art but her relationship to herself.

She also shares her passion for healing through art, both personally and in community. From her work with Poetry for Personal Power to teaching in libraries and arts councils, Sunshine is deeply invested in using creativity to empower others—especially those who might not see themselves as “artistic.”

Toward the end of our conversation, we discuss her advocacy and activism, including the emotional weight and responsibility of poems like "For Gaza" and "Living in Portable Caskets". We explore what it means to create art that holds both sensuality and sorrow, joy and justice—and how those things can coexist.

Contact Sunshine:
Instagram:@ladylombre
Youtube: @sunshinelombre

Recorded Spoken Word Performances Featured Include:

Kyla Janee Lacey– Pulled Out A Knife On Him
Instagram: @kylajlacey

Zach Goldberg – Blackout
Instagram: @gach_zoldberg Website: zach-goldberg.com Book: I'd Rather Be Destroyed

Javon Johnson – The Shotgun
Instagram: @javonism Book: Aint Never Not Been Black

Sunshine Lombré – For Gaza
Sunshine Lombré – Daydream

In Volume Five: Chapter Twenty, we welcomed Ajanae Dawkins.

Ajanaé is a poet, conceptual artist and theologian. She works through poetry, visual art, performance, and audio to explore the politics of faith, grief, and intimate relationships between Black women. As a theologian, she blends cultural criticism, memoir, and theology as autotheory to consider the relationship between Black church history, spirituality, and creation. Her work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, The Rumpus, Prairie Schooner, the Indiana Review, Frontier Poetry, The BreakBeat Poets Black Girl Magic Anthology and more. Her solo-exhibition, No One Teaches Us How To Be Daughters, debuted at Urban Arts Space in 2024. Her chapbook, BLOOD-FLEX, won the New Delta Review’s Chapbook prize and is forthcoming in Spring 2025.

Contact Ajanae:
Instagram: @moonsatdusk
Website: ajanaedawkins.com

Recorded Spoken Word Performances Featured Include:

FreeQuency – The Seven Deadly American Sins
Instagram: @freequencyspeaks Website: freequencyspeaks.com

Ya Ya Poet– Ling Ling
Instagram: @yayazhangpoet

Black Chakra – Pass
Instagram: @blackchakra88

Ajanaé Dawkins – When Viola Davis Won
Ajanaé Dawkins – For The Blonde Girl and the Classroom of Ghosts

In Volume Five: Chapter Nineteen, we welcomed Educator, Poet, Writer, Spoken Word Artist, host of the Chasing After Wind podcast, and Author of the chapbook How Much We Must Have Looked Like Stars To Stars, Dr. Alysia Nicole Harris.

Alysia has dedicated her life to studying words in their spiritual, social, linguistic and creative capacities. Renowned internationally as a spoken word artist, Alysia has had a professional career as a performance artist and speaker since 2010, amassing over nine million views on YouTube. The author of the prize-winning chapbook How Much We Must Have Looked Like Stars to Stars (2016) received her MFA in poetry from New York University in 2014 and her PhD in linguistics from Yale University in 2019.

Alysia has written, performed, and taught workshops in twelve countries for organizations including but not limited to: U.S. Mission to Ukraine, U.S. Mission to South Africa, U.S. Mission to Jordan, NAACP, Yale Center for Faith & Culture, Virginia Theological Seminary, City Seminary New York, The Disrespected Literatures Conference, Morehouse Center for Excellence in Education, University of Birmingham, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, MoMA: PS1, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Nasher Sculpture Center, The Big Quiet, Button Poetry, and many schools and universities. She is currently working with members of a Texas community to restore a 108-year-old former CME church in Texas and transform it into an intergenerational space for community storytelling. Through this work she hopes to preserve Black places and celebrate Black stories in the U.S. South.

Contact Alysia:
Instagram: @poppyinthewheat
Website: alysiaharris.com

Recorded Spoken Word Performances Featured Include:

Ebony Stewart – How We Forget (after Loyce Gayo)
Instagram: @gullyprincess Website: ebpoetry.com

Sabrina Ali – MisterOgyny
Instagram: @sabsie_ali

Roscoe Burnems – Agnostic
Instagram: @roscoeburnems

Alysia Harris – Situations Like This
Alysia Harris – This Woman

In Volume Five: Chapter Eighteen, we welcomed Writer, Poet, Editor, and Author of the forthcoming poetry collection "Ajar", Margo LaPierre.

Margo edits fiction and creative non-fiction. She completed an undergraduate degree in philosophy at Toronto Metropolitan University in Toronto, and graduated from the Toronto Metropolitan Chang School’s Publishing Program. She is currently completing a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. In her volunteer work, she is the newsletter editor of Arc Poetry Magazine, the interim fiction editor of Untethered magazine, and a poetry selection jury member of Bywords.ca (www.bywords.ca). In 2019, she was the sole recipient of the Claudette Upton Scholarship, an annual, national award that recognizes a promising student editor from among Editors Canada’s student affiliates. She is a member of the poetry collective VII, also comprising Manahil Bandukwala, Ellen Chang-Richardson, Conyer Clayton, nina jane drystek, Chris Johnson, and Helen Robertson.

Contact Margo:
Instagram: @margo_lapierre
Website: margolapierreeditor.com

Recorded Spoken Word Performances Featured Include:

Andrea Gibson – For The Days I Stop Wanting A Body
Instagram: @andreagibson Website: andreagibson.com

Alyesha Wise – Flowers
Instagram: @alyeshawise Website: alyeshawise.com

Christopher Diaz – Again
Instagram: @lightbulbchris Website: christopherdiazcreates.com

Asia Samson – Enough
Instagram: @theasiaproject Website: theasiaproject.com

Ania D – Colors
Instagram: @anitadpoetry

In Volume Five: Chapter Seventeen, we welcomed Educator, Writer, Poet, Playwright, and Author of the poetry collection "Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere", Anastacia-Reneé.

(From anastacia-renee.com):

Anastacia-Reneé (She/They) is a queer writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, playwright, former radio host, TEDX speaker, and podcaster. She is the author of (v.) (Gramma/Black Ocean), Forget It (Black Radish); Sidenotes from the Archivist (HarperCollins/Amistad, ), and Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere (HarperCollins/Amistad). Side Notes From The Archivist was selected as one of “NYPL Best Books of 2023,” and, The American Library Associations (RUSA) “Notable Books of 2024.” Anastacia-Reneé is a recipient of the James W. Ray Distinguished Artist Award and, she was selected by NBC News as part of the list of "Queer Artist of Color Dominate 2021's Must See LGBTQ Art Shows," for “(Don’t Be Absurd) Alice in Parts” an installation at the Frye Art Museum. Anastacia-Reneé served as Seattle Civic Poet (2017-1019) during Seattle’s inaugural year of UNESCO status.

Contact Anastacia-Renee:
Instagram: @anastaciarenee5
Website: anastacia-renee.com

Recorded Spoken Word Performances Featured Include:

Nia Lewis – Closed
Instagram: @nia.lewis

Edwin Bodney – Good Morning
Instagram: @edwinbodney

Aleah Bradshaw – Questions
Instagram: @nyfe

Gabrielle Smith – Blackbird
Instagram: @bygabriellesmith

Dasan Ahanu – Double Entendre
Website: dasanahanu.com Instagram: @dasanahanu

In Volume Five, Chapter Sixteen, we welcomed Poet, Artist, Writer, and Author Dre Hill.

Dre is a Black literary and visual artist. Hill tags himself as an artist, writer, and storyteller. He is a published fiction writer, poet, photographer, painter, and more.

He graduated from Trimble Tech High School in 2017, then earned his B.A. in Animation and Writing from Drury University in 2021. While at Drury, he had two pieces published in the literary magazine Currents. His work was featured in the “Race in America” art exhibit. His senior film, “Solace”, won second place in the 2022 MBEA competition.

Hill’s work is both individualist and collective, seemingly speaking for and to each reader respectively as well as to and for groups as a whole. His work is vivid, colorful, and animated in nature. There are heavy Afrocentric, and often supernatural or metaphysical themes, in his work. Often exploring the connections between some of life’s mundane experiences and the almost extraordinary ways in which black people engage and grapple with them.

Contact Dre:
Instagram: @drehillart Website: drehillart.com

Recorded Spoken Word Performances Featured Include:

Alysia Harris – Controlled Burn
Instagram: @poppyinthewheat Website: alysiaharris.com

Bianca Phipps – Born To Embody It
Instagram: @biancaphipps

Taalam Acey – Seldom Seen
Instagram: @taalamacey
Website: taalamacey.com

Barbara Fant – Brown Bodies Burning
Instagram: @iambarbarafant Website: barbarafant.com

Danez Smith – Dear White America
Instagram: @danez_smif Website: danezsmithpoet.com