who started her life of writing in middle school. Encouraged to keep writing when she won second place in Harlem Children’s Zone’s Malcom X Poetry Contest in eighth grade, she’s since written and drawn in countless notebooks. Along the way, she has earned a Bachelor of Arts from Sarah Lawrence College, a Master of Arts in American Indian Studies with concentration in Gender Studies from UCLA, and a Ph.D. in American Studies and Ethnicity from USC. Her first book of poetry, Leda’s Daughters, for which she painted the cover art, was published by Washington Writers’ Publishing House. She is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Washington & Lee University.