Our Team
Dr. Alexis De Veaux
ALEXIS DE VEAUX, PhD., a black queer feminist writer, is one of a stellar list of American writers highlighted by LIT CITY, a public art initiative of banners bearing their names and images in downtown Buffalo, New York, in recognition of the city’s renowned literary legacy. Born and raised in Harlem, New York City, Ms. De Veaux is published in five languages-English, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese and Serbo-Croatian. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and publications; and she is the author of such award-winning works as Spirits In The Street (1973); an children’s book, Na-ni (1973); Don’t Explain, A Song of Billie Holiday (1980); Blue Heat: A Portfolio of Poems and Drawings (1985); a second children’s book, An Enchanted Hair Tale (1987); and Spirit Talk (1997). She also authored Warrior Poet, A Biography of Audre Lorde (2004). The first biography of the pioneering lesbian poet, Warrior Poet has won several prestigious awards including the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Legacy Award, Nonfiction (2005), the Gustavus Meyers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights Outstanding Book Award (2004), and the Lambda Literary Foundation Award for Biography (2004). Her most recent work, a novel, Yabo, was published by Redbone Press (2014) and was awarded the 2015 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction.
As an artist and lecturer she has traveled extensively throughout the United States, the Caribbean, Africa, Japan and Europe; and is recognized for her on-going contributions to a number of community based organizations. She is on the board of the Roadwork Center for Cultures in Disputed Territory and co-founder (with Amy Horowitz) of The Enclave Habitat, an emerging network of socially conscious artists and activists.
Amy Horowitz
AMY HOROWITZ, An activist, Producer, Cultural Worker, Scholar, Troublemaker
Amy Horowitz is interested in the unlikely and necessary coalitions and inevitable contradictions in music and all living things. For over four decades, Amy has sustained an activist stance in academia, the music industries, and grassroots social justice arts networks. Her scholarly research interests are global indigenous studies, music in disputed territory, contemporary Jerusalem, Arab Jewish popular music and protest music as responsible citizenship. She works in coalition across differences, and fights for a galactic ecosystem based on equity among living beings and against racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, planetary toxicity and misogyny. Amy is co-founder, with Alexis DeVeaux of The Enclave Habitat and co-founder of Roadwork and Sisterfire. She served as artist representative for Sweet Honey in the Rock 1977 – 1994. Her activist work complements her academic background that combines training in Jewish studies and ethnomusicology (MA, New York University, 1986) with folklore and Israeli studies (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1994).
Amy continues to be involved with efforts to preserve Roadwork’s legacy and support the next generation of leadership.
Alexis Pauline Gumbs
ALEXIS PAULINE GUMBS, is a Queer Black Troublemaker and Black Feminist Love Evangelist and an aspirational cousin to all sentient beings. Her work in this lifetime is to facilitate infinite, unstoppable ancestral love in practice. Her poetic work in response to the needs of her cherished communities have held space for multitudes in mourning and movement. Alexis’s co-edited volume of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (PM Press, 2016) has shifted the conversation on mothering, parenting and queer transformation. Alexis has transformed the scope of intellectual, creative and oracular writing with her triptych of experimental works published by Duke University Press (Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity in 2016, M Archive: After the End of the World in 2018 and Dub: Finding Ceremony, 2020.) Unlike most academic texts, Alexis’s work has inspired artists across form to create dance works, installation work, paintings, processionals, divination practices, operas, quilts and more.
Alexis is currently in residence as a National Humanities Center Fellow, funded by the Founders Award. During her residency she is writing The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde: Biography as Ceremony (forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and Go There a book about the Black feminist transnational history of Essence Magazine. Alexis is also co-founder of Mobile Homecoming Trust and Black Feminist Film School with enclave member Sangodare Akinwale.
Alexis’s book Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals, a series of meditations re-learning to breathe in a world with a rising ocean levels will be released in Fall 2020 as part of adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy Series at AK Press.
Kathy Engel
KATHY ENGEL, a poet who has worked for forty years at the nexus between social justice movements and art/imagination. She co founded, sometimes directed, consulted with and produced for, often convened, groups, campaigns, projects including MADRE.org which she led for five years, Stand With Sisters for Economic Justice, Who I Will Be. She and Alexis De Veaux started Lyrical Democracies and the Center for Poetic Healing. Her books include “Ruth’s Skirts,” poems and prose, IKON, 2007, “We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine and Lebanon,” co- edited with Kamal Boullata, Interlink Books, 2007, “The Kitchen” with art by German Perez, Yaboa Press, 2002,and the chapbook, “Banish The Tentative” 1989. She works as Associate Arts Professor in the Department of Art & Public Policy, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. See live on The Root.com (tv): https://www.theroot.com/watch-who-will-kneel-for-you-artists-speak-out-1822681606
She’s working on a memoir of her cultural/political work/life “Marvelous Dissonance.”Her new book, The Lost Bother Alphabet, was released by Get Fresh Books, March 2020.She loves sea, trees, long walks, being with loved ones, community, quiet, dancing
Ericka Jones-Craven
ERICKA JONES-CRAVEN, is an Atlanta based photographer, curator and content creator whose work often surfaces themes of identity, black culture and religion. A self-proclaimed conceptual artist, Ericka uses photo, video and film to create compelling visuals that blur the line between art photography and photojournalism. Most recently, she has begun taking up interests in black archives, art writing and community-based art initiatives in Philadelphia, NYC and Atlanta. Ericka currently works with Roadwork where she assists with individual artist projects and also leads marketing initiatives for the Enclave Habitat. Ericka also serves as the Art Director for Public Art Dialogue, an artistic and academic journal.
Ericka has a BFA in Art Photography and a BA in Religion from Syracuse University and an MA in Arts Politics at NYU. Her most recent exhibition titled “Up for Air” is a multimedia installation that surfaces the experience of queer, black youth in religious spaces.
Syracuse University – BFA Art Photography & BA Religion
NYU – MA Arts Politics
Erin Sharkey
ERIN SHARKEY, is a writer, artistic organizer and cultural producer based in Minneapolis. She is the co-founder, with Junauda Petrus, of an experimental arts production collective called Free Black Dirt. Erin was a Bell Museum resident artist, Loft Mentor Series mentee, VONA fellow, Jerome Travel and Study grantee, MN State Arts Board grantee, MRAC Next Step Fund grantee, and Givens Foundation fellow. Her work has appeared in Brooklyn Quarterly, Paper Darts and Walker Art Center’s Sightlines and Primer magazines. She is editing, A Darker Wilderness, a forthcoming anthology of Black nature writing for Milkweed Editions. Erin teaches at Metropolitan State University and with Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop. Currently, she is working in concert with other Black organizers to respond to COVID-19 and to lead in this moment of uprising.
Southern New Hampshire University - BA English Literature and Language
Hamline University - MFA Creative Writing - NonFiction
Ola Osifo Osaze
OLA OSIFO OSAZE, is a trans masculine queer of Edo and Yoruba descent, who was born in Port Harcourt, Rivers State and now resides in Houston, Texas. Ola is the Director of the Black LGBTQ+ Migrant Project and has been a community organizer for many years, including working with Transgender Law Center, the Audre Lorde Project, Uhuru Wazobia (one of the first LGBT groups for African immigrants in the US), Queers for Economic Justice and Sylvia Rivera Law Project. Ola is a 2015 Voices of Our Nation Arts workshop (VONA) fellow, and has writings published in Apogee, Qzine, Black Girl Dangerous, Black Looks, and the anthologies Queer African Reader and Queer Africa II.
Jenna Wortham
JENNA WORTHAM, Jenna Wortham is a sound healer, reiki practitioner, herbalist and community care worker oriented towards towards healing justice and liberation. She is also a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, and co-host of the podcast "Still Processing." She is the proud co-editor of the forthcoming visual anthology “Black Futures,” out in December 2020 with One World. She is also currently working on a book about the body and dissociation. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. You can find her at @jennydeluxe and jennydeluxe.com
Ysaÿe Barnwell
YSAŸE BARNWELL, Dr. Barnwell, appears as a vocalist and/or instrumentalist on more than thirty recordings with Sweet Honey In The Rock as well as other artists. She has, for the past thirty years spent much of her time off stage working as a master teacher and choral clinician in African American cultural performance. Her workshop “Building a Vocal Community®: Singing in the African American Tradition” has during the past twenty-eight years, been conductedon three continents, making her work in the field a significant source of inspiration for both singers and non-singers, a model of pedagogy for educators, and cultural activists and historians.
Cheryl Clarke
CHERYL CLARKE, is a poet, critic, and activist Cheryl Clarke was born in Washington, DC. She earned her BA from Howard University and her MA and PhD from Rutgers University. Clarke is the author of five collections of poetry: Narratives: Poems in the Tradition of Black Women (1983), Living as a Lesbian (1986), Humid Pitch (1989), Experimental Love (1993), and By My Precise Haircut (2016), which won a Hilary Tham Capital Competition. She wrote the critical study “After Mecca”: Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement (2005), and a volume collecting her poetry and prose was published as The Days of Good Looks: Prose and Poetry of Cheryl Clarke, 1980–2005 (2006). Many of Clarke’s most influential essays, including “Lesbianism: an Act of Resistance” and “The Failure to Transform: Homophobia in the Black Community,” first appeared in landmark publications such as This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1981) and Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (1983). Clarke also served as editor for Conditions, an influential journal of lesbian feminist literature.
All of Clarke’s writings advocate for queer communities of color, paying attention to the social implications of language and labels and the possibilities of art and activism to stage resistance to dominant culture.
Tei Okamoto
Tei Okamoto, has, for two decades, been part of a progressive, holistic health movement which seeks to understand the interconnections between health disparities and class, race, gender, and sexuality. Tei was part of a research team at UCLA which addressed issues of Child Sexual Abuse and HIV among women of color, and then went on to join the UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention Studies TRANS project, where Tei advocated for alternative sentencing for trans people and lead the substance use pre-treatment program. Tei was also part of the management team at Tenderloin Health in San Francisco, which served the health needs of some of the most hard to reach, highest risk, homeless Trans and queer populations in the city. Tei then moved to New York and managed the opening of the Trans* Health Clinic, a health clinic devoted specifically to the needs of API and Trans* of color populations in New York City.
Sangodare Akinwale
SANGODARE AKINWALE, Ṣangodare (Julia Roxanne Wallace) is a sweet space for transformation. Ṣangodare comes from a thick legacy of Black Baptist preachers and church leaders and currently activates Black Feminist sermonics at a weekly Sunday Service held by Mobile Homecoming Trust. As co-founder of Black Feminist Film School (2012), Visiting Artist in Film at Lawrence University (2017-18) and Artist in Residence at UMN-Twin Cities in the Art Department (2017-19), Ṣangodare brings a creative, evolutionary and love filled approach to filmmaking, composing, interactive design and preaching. As co-founder of Black Feminist Film School (founded along with Sista Docta Alexis Pauline Gumbs, APG) Ṣangodare created Ritual Screening, a film viewing technology that is interactive and grounded in Black Feminist practice and our non-linear reality.
Junauda Petrus-Nasah
JUNAUDA PETRUS-NASAH, is a creative activist, writer, playwright, and multi-dimensional performance artist who is born on Dakota land, West-Indian descended, and African-sourced. Her work centers around Black wildness, -futurism, ancestral healing, sweetness, spectacle and shimmer.
Petrus-Nasah has written works for the stage, screen and page, employing poetics and experiences re-membered via ancestral dreaming and research of their lost stories. She is inspired by her parents and ancestors who immigrated from the Caribbean bringing their magic and trauma with them, and her art ripples with their legacy. She is influenced by the Middle passage and diaspora, Black folks in Minneapolis, ancestral magic, and stories of queerness and womanhood within these contexts. Speculative fiction and magical realist elements are central to her work.
Yesenia Montilla
YESSINIA MONTILLA, is an Afro-Latina poet & a daughter of immigrants. Her poetry has appeared in the Chapbook For the Crowns of Your Head, as well as the literary journals The Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner, Pittsburgh Poetry Review & others. She received her MFA from Drew University in Poetry and Poetry in Translation & is a 2014 CantoMundo Fellow. Her first collection The Pink Box is published by Willow Books & was Longlisted for a PEN award in 2016. She lives in Harlem NY.
Amy Nesbitt
AMY NESBITT, is a Performing Arts Consultant with 20+ years of work as a producer with nonprofits, municipalities and commercial events have made her a recognized artistic leader trusted for her instincts as a talent buyer and festival producer.
Her production resume spans a decade of work in independent film production (New Orleans and San Francisco), production work in publishing, years as a national music booking agent, and serving for more than a decade as a senior leader for performing arts festivals and venues. In this work, she has curated, presented or produced 1,000+ events across genres from the radical fringe to highly commercial productions.
Her focus encompasses live music, outdoor spectacle, contemporary circus, and cinema with emphasis on community and social change.
Sokari Ekine
SOKARI EKINE, Sokari Ekine is a Nigerian British queer feminist and abolitionist who has lived and worked in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean and the United States. Their work has been exhibited in such venues as: 4th Biennale of Fine Art and Documentary Photography; Berlin, PhotoVille, New York and Los Angeles; New Orleans African American Museum; AfroFuture at Art Basel, Miami. As a practicing Haitian Vodouisant initiate, Ekine’s work focuses on decolonization, sexuality and African diasporic spiritualities; in ways that overlap in their multiple roles as photographer, independent scholar, blogger and community builder.
Steven G. Fullwood
STEVEN G. FULLWOOD, is an archivist, editor, and documentarian. He is the former assistant curator of the Manuscripts, Archives & Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library. He has long been associated with the preservation of archival materials and collections focusing on African and African Diasporic cultures. In 1999, he founded the In the Life Archive to aid in the preservation of materials produced by and about LGBTQ people of African descent. In 2018, Fullwood co-founded The Nomadic Archivists Project, an initiative to establish, preserve, and enhance collections that explore the African Diasporic experience. His publications include Black Gay Genius: Answering Joseph Beam’s Call (co-edited with Charles Stephens, 2014), To Be Left with the Body (co-edited with Cheryl Clarke, 2008) and Carry the Word: A Bibliography of Black LGBTQ Books (co-edited with Lisa C. Moore, 2007). Fullwood is currently at work on his first feature documentary, Black Toledo.
James Counts Early
JAMES COUNTS EARLY, has served in various positions at the Smithsonian since first coming on board in 1972 as a researcher in Brazil and the Caribbean for the African DiasporaFolklife Festival program. He has served as assistant provost for educational and cultural programs, assistant secretary for education and public service, and interim director of the Anacostia Community Museum. A long-time advocate for cultural diversity and equity issues in cultural and educational institutions, he focuses his research on participatory museology, cultural democracy statecraft policy, capitalist and socialist discourses in cultural policy, and Afro-Latin politics, history, and cultural democracy. He has curated several Folklife Festival programs, including South Africa: Crafting the Economic Renaissance of the Rainbow Nation (1999) and Sacred Sounds: Belief and Society (1997). James holds a B.A. in Spanish from Morehouse College and completed graduate work (A.B.D.) in Latin American and Caribbean history, with a minor in African and African American history, at Howard University.