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.