Friday, March 19, 2010 12noon
Featured Panel: Writing Reclaimed and Remixed: The Melding of Activism and Art
Panelists: DuEwa Frazier, Sophia Quintero, and JLove Calderon
Chair: Elisa Marie Norris
Panel Description:
This session features novelists and poets who are also activists. The panel focuses on what it means to remix the creative and bring activism into popular realms.
Bios:
DuEwa Frazier
DuEwa Frazier is a writer, poet, author, performer, speaker and educator from St. Louis. She is the author of two volumes of poetry: Shedding Light From My Journeys and Stardust Tracks on a Road. DuEwa is the editor and publisher of the 2007 NAACP Image Award nominated publication, Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets & Emcees. She earned the B.A. in English at Hampton University and the M.S.Ed. in Curriculum & Teaching – Literacy at Fordham University. DuEwa is now pursuing the M.F.A. in Creative Writing degree at The New School. She is a Contributing Writer for MahoganyButterfly.com and founder of two blogs: Rhymes, Views & News and Mocha Beauty Goes Green.
DuEwa has been a featured poet, author and speaker at numerous programs and institutions including: University of Pennsylvania Kelly Writers House, Temple University Sisters Defining Sisters Conference, The Harlem Book Fair, West Virginia Wesleyan College, Indianapolis Book Festival, Howard University Bookstore, Read Out Loud! Family Literacy Festival, and many others. In 2002, she founded Lit Noire Publishing, a creative arts and publishing organization. Since then, DuEwa has produced and hosted numerous community based poetry and literature talks in the Tri-State area and other locations including bookstores in Baltimore, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Atlanta. She has given professional consultation for writers and entrepreneurs in the areas of self publishing and public relations. DuEwa is the host of an internet radio show titled, Rhymes, Views & News Talk Radio. She resides in New York.
Paper title: Finding the Warrior Within: Truth Telling and Writing Yourself Into Being
Sofia Quintero
After graduating from Columbia University with a BA in history-sociology and an MPA from its School of International and Public Affairs, Sofia Quintero began her first career as a policy analyst and advocate. She worked for various nonprofit organizations and government agencies including the Vera Institute of Justice, Hispanic AIDS Forum, and the New York City Independent Budget Office. After years of working on diverse policy issues, however, Sofia heeded her muse to pursue an entertainment career.
Determined to write edgy yet intelligent novels for women who love hip hop even when hip hop fails to love them in return, Sofía wrote her debut novel Explicit Content under the pen name “Black Artemis.” Since then Sofia has penned two more Black Artemis novels (Picture Me Rollin’ and Burn) and has been by critics of all stripes for creating stories that are both intelligent and entertaining.
Sofia also writes contemporary women’s fiction under her real name. Her debut novella “The More Things Change” appears in Friday Night Chicas the first chick-lit anthology by and about Latinas. Her novel Divas Don’t Yield was published in March 2006 by One World/Random House.
Sofia co-founded Chica Luna Productions to identify, develop and support other women of color seeking to make socially conscious entertainment. Sofia Quintero is a socially conscious entrepreneur and cultural activist devoted to elevating the quality of entertainment both through her personal initiatives and business ventures. With her business partner Elisha Miranda, she founded Sister Outsider Entertainment, a multimedia production company that is developing several projects for television, film and stage including the upcoming Internet series Sangria Street. SOE also co-created “Conscious Women Rock The Page” with Marcella Runell Hall and Jennifer Jlove Calderon. Conscious Women is a cutting-edge multidisciplinary curriculum that enables socially conscious educators to introduce feminist hip hop fiction into their learning environments and use it to incite social change among their students.
This fall Knopf will publish Sofia’s first young adult novel Efrain’s Secret about a Latino boy in the South Bronx who goes to questionable extremes to realize his dream of going to an Ivy League college.
Paper title: Beyond Keepin’ It Real: Writing The Feminist Hip-Hop Novel
JLove Calderon
As an author, educator, activist, and Certified Empowerment Facilitator, JLove Calderon has worked passionately on social justice, race, and gender issues for over 15 years. In settings that range from hip hop ciphers to the college classroom, JLove is widely respected for her advocacy of “truth, love, and freedom” for everyday people, especially young people, women and girls, and lovers of hip hop culture.
JLove has authored three books: We Got Issues!; That White Girl; and Conscious Women Rock the Page! Using Hip-Hop Fiction to Incite Social Change. Her articles on hip hop culture, white privilege, and social justice have appeared in The New York Times, Self Magazine, The Source Magazine, among other traditional and new media outlets. She has also contributed to two anthologies: Who’s Your Mama? The Unsung Voices of Women and Mothers (edited by Yvonne Bynoe), and The Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Literature (edited by Tarshia L. Stanley).
As an activist and personal life coach, JLove has helped create practical models for living that are designed to empower people of all backgrounds. Her knowledge is informed by her years of working as a counselor in teen shelters. She has also taught at El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice for over a decade. When she is not writing, JLove serves as the Project Director of 1+1+1=ONE, an arts and social transformation not-for-profit where she focuses on two programs: the We Got Issues! Leadership Institute for Young Women, and the Eradicating Racism program. For her consistent dedication, JLove has received numerous awards, including the Union Square Award for her activism, and Self Magazine’s Self Starter of the Year Award.
JLove graduated Cum Laude from San Diego State University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Africana Studies and received her Master’s Degree in Education from Long Island University. Currently, she lives in New York with her husband Hector Calderon and their two sons.
Paper title: No Matter What!: Turning Your Passion and Pipedreams into Becoming an Award Winning Author & Beyond
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