This is Your Poem: A Tribute to Nikki Giovanni

Celebrate the life of poet, activist, and renowned legend Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni with fellow poets and writers based in Washington, DC. Bring one of your favorite Nikki Giovanni poems and a poem of your own to read aloud. We will have a sign-up sheet for people to read. This event will be one hour. Featured readers include Tricia Elam Walker, Nina Angela Mercer, Holly Bass, and María Fernanda.

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 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.

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 (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.

The title of this event comes from Nikki Giovanni's poem "My House," selected by the creative producer of this event, María Fernanda.

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Founded by Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade in 1984, Politics and Prose Bookstore is Washington, D.C.'s premier independent bookstore and cultural hub, a gathering place for people interested in reading and discussing books. Politics and Prose offers superior service, unusual book choices, and a haven for book lovers in the store and online.

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