Aja Monet

Aja Monet is a surrealist blues poet, storyteller, and organizer born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. She won the legendary Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam poetry award title in 2007 and follows in the long legacy and tradition of poets participating and assembling in social movements. Her poems explore gender, race, migration, and spirituality. In 2018, she was nominated for a NAACP Literary Award for Poetry and in 2019 was awarded the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Award for Poetry for her cultural organizing work in South Florida. She cofounded a political home for artists and organizers called Smoke Signals Studio and facilitates “Voices: Poetry for the People,” a workshop and collective in collaboration with Community Justice Project and Dream Defenders. Aja Monet also serves as the new Artistic Creative Director for V-Day, a global movement to end violence against all women and girls. Her first full collection of poems is titled My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter. She is currently working on her next full collection of poems entitled Florida Water.