So, part of first prize for winning the CU Poetry Slam was tickets to see Saul Williams and Les Claypool in Denver ( Read more... )

So I slammed for the first time in 5 years (give or take, probably give-) last night ( Read more... )

This is a letter to a friend of a friend who's moving here. She's concerned about what kind of racial climate they'll face, and is nervous about leaving an idyllic situation. I wrote this, and based on some feedback, decided to turn it into an essay. But here's the raw:

Dear Rock Star Friend (and her friend),

Welcome to the Cincinnati area. I hear ( Read more... )

Last week was my long-awaited vacation, which was a trip to the Antioch Writer's Workshop in Yellow Springs, OH (yes, home of Dave Chappelle.) So no Dave sighting (he was in the hospital, I guess), but oh, what a workshop.

If you hadn't heard, Antioch College is slated to close after this upcoming academic year (it's drama). The town, a wonderfully ( Read more... )

Next show (before Blue Jesus, I guess) after Love L8trs is complete will have to be the one that is tentatively being called Autobiography of a White Black Girl. And it starts a little something like this:

To grow up in Cincinnati is to be firmly entrenched along a continuum of Black and White. If you're very lucky, you'll get polarized at one end ( Read more... )

Sorry- I am way too scattered these days. Attempting to journal myself to some clarity.

How did I ever do this before? And after such a long absence, how will I ever do it again? Did I forget? Is it in the muscle memory? Or did those muscles atrophy? Muscles do that, you know, when they’re not used. They wither, shrink and dry up like little sun- ( Read more... )

Another random fragment- I have no idea where to take some of these, but if they remain in my notebook, they'll never go anywhere. So you all get them.

Hip hop lives in ya’ll- it’s just my neighbor. It has always been for me like that girl who lived next door to us in the projects. She was wild, unsupervised, a little bit dirty, and tough. Tough ( Read more... )

Over the next few weeks, I will begin to post portions of Love L8trs, and as I post them, I'll also be working with the text to answer questions that still haunt me and try to revise (on my paper) as I put the pieces into the world (for you all- ok, for you three). So, this is a conversation- let's get it crackin'...

Prologue

Love, like revenge, is a ( Read more... )

Any writer will tell you to submit is to invite rejection. Indeed, one must become quite familiar with rejection in order to be a great writer. It's part of putting it out there.

Every year, City.Beat does an annual Women's Issue. Every year, I wonder where they find the folks to write. Well, this year I was asked to pitch an article. I riffed on it ( Read more... )

So many ghetto codes are defined out of a sense of the poverty, lack, and scarcity that make the ghetto, ghetto. One of the most important rules surrounding scarcity has to do with the last or the only whatever. You don’t ask for it, you don’t touch it without permission, you respect that it is the last or the only and you leave it to the owner’s ( Read more... )