Performer: Maryland Poet Laureate Lady Brion
”Lady Brion is an international spoken word artist, poetry coach, activist, organizer, and educator. She has been performing since age 12 and in that time has performed across the world including London, Ghana, Zanzibar and many US states. Her educational career includes teaching creative writing at the middle and elementary school level, coaching poetry teams in over 10 institutions for the Louder Than A Bomb poetry program and residencies in over 15 K-12 institutions.
During her time as a competitor in slam competitions including becoming the 2016 National Poetry Slam Champion and the 2017 Southern Fried Regional Slam Champion. From 2015 to the present she has represented Baltimore in a number of other national competitions including the Individual World Poetry Slam and the Women of the World Poetry Slam.
Brion is a recipient of the Open Society Institute Fellowship centered around her project facilitating poetry workshops in prisons and group homes throughout Maryland. She also received the 2017 Salzburg Fellowship for Social Innovators. She received her B.A. in Communications from Howard University and her MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts from the University of Baltimore.
Brion is a board member and manager of 10 teaching artists, dispatching them to teach poetry workshops in middle and high schools in the Greater Baltimore Area for Dew More Baltimore, an art centered non-profit using spoken word as a tool to foster community and civic engagement. She also holds the position of Cultural Curator for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS), a grassroots think-tank which advances the public policy interest of Black people, in Baltimore, through: youth leadership development, political advocacy, and autonomous intellectual innovation.
As an independent artist and entrepreneur, she offers artistic consulting, residencies and workshop, keynotes and other speaking engagements and spoken word performances around the world.”