Join us for a star-studded evening of poetry and conversation featuring poets Taylor Byas, MoPoetry Phillips, Simone Savannah, and Dior Stephens. Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate Yalie Saweda Kamara will host the evening.

Taylor Byas (she/her) is a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is an Associate Editor for Cincinnati Review and an Assistant Features Editor for The Rumpus. She is the 1st place winner of the 2020 Poetry Super Highway, the 2020 Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets Contests, and the 2021 Adrienne Rich Poetry Prize. She is the author of the chapbooks Bloodwarm and Shutter, and her debut full-length I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times will be out with Soft Skull Press in August 2023. She is represented by Rena Rossner of the Deborah Harris Agency.

MoPoetry Phillips is a national spoken word artist, who graduated from Northern Kentucky University in 2011 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. She is both the co-founder of Regal Rhythms Poetry LLC and founder of Hit the Mic Cincy’s Open Mic. Her works have been published with Word Press, Ghosn Publishing, and the Voices Project, along with her self-published book Equals Greatness. She facilitates weekly writing circles, empowerment workshops, summer camps, and events within the schools, colleges, corporations, jail and prison systems to use her creativity to make learning fun and engaging. Also, she curates, recruits artist, and creates empowerment and educational workshops. As a Middlesboro, Kentucky native, she is part of the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition (UACC). She is currently serving on the Juneteenth Committee, Board of Kids4Peace, and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee for Women Writing for a Change where she previously served as a Board Member for two years. MoPoetry Phillips has been highlighted in the Cincinnati Enquirer, Cincinnati Herald, Street Vibes, Urban One Radio, WCVG, and WVXU Cincinnati Edition. Her passion is to unify spoken word artists to utilize their artistry to create a greater impact within the community.

Simone Savannah, Ph.D. is the author of Uses of My Body (Barrow Street 2020), the winner of the Barrow Street Poetry Book Prize chosen by Jericho Brown. She is also the author of Like Kansas (Big Lucks 2018). Her work has been published in The Offing, Apogee, The Fem, Powder Keg, GlitterMob, Shade Journal, BreakBeat Poets, and several other journals and anthologies. She has received nominations for Best New Poets and Best of the Net. Simone is originally from Columbus,
Ohio. She earned her M.Ed and B.A. from Ohio University. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Kansas. She is currently the 2021-23 Taft Research Center Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Cincinnati.

Dior J. Stephens is a proud Pisces hailing from Midwestern waters. He is the author of the chapbooks SCREAMS & lavender, 001, and CANNON!. Their debut full-length collection, CRUEL/CRUEL, is forthcoming (3/14) with Nightboat Books. They are the Managing Poetry Editor of Foglifter Journal and Press. They tweet at @dolphinneptune and Instagram at @dolphinphotos.

Yalie Saweda Kamara is a Sierra Leonean-American writer, educator, and researcher from Oakland, California. Selected as the 2022-2023 Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate (2-year term), she is the editor of the anthology What You Need to Know About Me: Young Writers on Their Experience of Immigration (The Hawkins Project, 2022) and the author of A Brief Biography of My Name (African Poetry Book Fund/Akashic Books, 2018) and When the Living Sing (Ledge Mule Press, 2017). She earned a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and English Literature from the University of Cincinnati. Kamara resides in Cincinnati where she works as the Director of Creative Youth Leadership at WordPlay Cincy and is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati. For more, visit her website: www.yaylala.com.

Black History Month Poetry Reading and Conversation