honoring nikki

in the district of columbia

This initiative finds its shape in the form of workshops, lectures, and readings honoring Nikki Giovanni’s presence in DC. Readings include curated artist and open mic readers/performers to widen the lens in which we remember.

Jan. 4 —  A True Revolution: A Tribute to Nikki Giovanni at APM

Feb. 9 — This is Your Poem: A Tribute to Nikki Giovanni at Politics & Prose

Feb. 25 — Nikki Giovanni: Of Her Quilt at Brookings Institution

Mar. 11 — you are: A Tribute at Nikki Giovanni at Kramers Bookstore

About Nikki Giovanni

Poet Nikki Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on June 7, 1943. Although she grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, she and her sister returned to Knoxville each summer to visit their grandparents. Nikki graduated with honors in history from her grandfather's alma mater, Fisk University. Since 1987, she served on the faculty at Virginia Tech, where she was a University Distinguished Professor. Fun fact: Nikki Giovanni grew up with lavender gardens.

Tricia Elam Walker

author

Tricia Elam Walker, author of the acclaimed novel Breathing Room and two children’s books, Nana Akua Goes to School (2021 Ezra Jack Keats award, 2021 Children’s Africana Award) and Dream Street (NY Times 25 Best Children’s Books 2021), has written for National Public Radio, The Washington Post, The Root, Essence magazine, the Huffington Post and more. Tricia’s short stories and essays have been published widely and her plays have been produced in a community theater. She practiced law for sixteen years prior to her writing career. Tricia is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Howard University and is working on more children’s books, plays, and a second novel. You can find her on instagram @triciawriting and her website is www.triciaelamwalker.com.

Nina Angela Mercer

multidisciplinary artist // scholar

Nina Angela Mercer is a multidisciplinary artist and scholar. Her works for performance include GUTTA BEAUTIFUL; ITAGUA MEJI: A ROAD AND A PRAYER; A COMPULSION FOR BREATHING; MOTHER WIT AND WATER-BORN;  GYPSY AND THE BULLY DOOR; and the video poem, "Invocation," from the Visionary Aponte: Art and Black Freedom exhibition. These works have been produced at such theaters as National Black Theatre, The Nuyorican Poets’ Cafe, the Schomburg Center for Black Culture, and Target Margin Theatre among others. Nina’s published writing can be found in The Killens Review of Arts & Letters; Black Renaissance Noire; Continuum: The Journal of African Diaspora Drama, Theatre, and Performance; A Gathering of the Tribes Magazine Online; Break Beat Poets Vol 2: Black Girl Magic; Are You Entertained? Black Popular Culture in the 21st Century; Performance Research Journal; Represent! New Plays for Multicultural Young People; and So We Can Know as well as in her first collection of writing for performance The Double: a choreodrama and a choreopoem with Kavaya Press. Nina has performed with Urban Bush Women, Angela’s Pulse, and BDAC. She is the inaugural Eleanor Traylor Post Doctoral Fellow of Black Literature and Culture at Howard University. And she is the co-founder and executive director of Ocean Ana Rising, Inc./OAR. For more, visit www.ninaangelamercer.com and IG: @ninaangelamercer.

Holly Bass

multidisciplinary performance and visual artist // writer // choreographer

Holly Bass is a multidisciplinary performance and visual artist, writer, and choreographer. Her work explores the unspoken and invisible social codes surrounding gender, class, and race. She received a 2024 Washington Award from the S&R Evermay Foundation. She is a 2022 MAP Fund recipient, a 2020–2022 Live Feed Resident Artist at New York Live Arts and a 2021–22 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow. She studied modern dance (under Viola Farber) and creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College before earning her Master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Her work is in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. She has performed at the Seattle Art Museum, Art Basel Miami Beach (Project Miami Fair), and the 2022 Venice Biennale as part of Simone Leigh's Loophole of Retreat. Her visual artwork includes photography, installation, video, and performance. A Cave Canem Fellow, she has published poems in numerous journals and anthologies. She directed a year-round creative writing and performance program for adjudicated youth in DC’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services for four years and for six years was the National Director for Turnaround Arts at the Kennedy Center, a program which increases equitable access to the arts in Title 1 elementary and middle schools as a catalyst for fostering belonging.

María Fernanda

poet

María Fernanda (she/hers) is a poet whose work explores the intimacy of sisterhood, the anchor of intergenerational coexistence, and grief. Awarded the Norma Elia Cantú Award in Creative Writing, her most recent work appears in the Healing Verse Poetry Line, Cave Canem’s Dogbytes, and Cheryl Clarke's born in a bed of good lessons: poems inspired by the works of Lucille Clifton. As a creative producer, her latest collaborations with multidisciplinary artists have won Bessie Awards. María Fernanda partners with performing arts centers, museums, public libraries, and more nationwide to support their programming and cultural landscapes. Connect with her at mariafernandapoet.com and @poetrywithmariafernanda

Sasha Charlemagne

open mic performer

Sasha Charlemagne is a poet, essayist, archival researcher, and lover of the arts. She is a graduate of Howard University (B.A.) and Pace University (M.A.) where she has focused her research on Black queer women's contributions to media and popular culture. 

Kendall

open mic performer

Kendall (they/them) is an independent musician, cultural worker, and graduate of Georgetown University with a B.S. in Business Management and a minor in African-American Studies. A current Master’s student in Engaged and Public Humanities at Georgetown as well as Research and Program Associate at Georgetown’s Red House, they seek to use culture, dialogue, and research to create spaces for sharing power and rooting deeply into visions of healing and justice where technology, education, art, and justice meet. They seek to honor the legacies of the extraordinary people who have fed their unquenchable belief in a better world by using their extensive skills and abundant curiosity to investigate ways of knowing, doing, and being together that may support meaningful, sustainable social change and projects of liberation worldwide.