Ali Black

Ali Black is a poet, educator, consultant and youth advocate. She directs a literacy based after-school and summer program for girls at West Side Community House. Ali has been writing and performing poetry for over 15 years. She has taught and performed at Playhouse Square, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Juvenile Detention Center, various schools throughout Cuyahoga county and elsewhere. She is the co-founder of acerbic, which is a multi-disciplinary arts collective dedicated to providing a safe and resourceful home to artists of color. She is currently working on her first collection of poetry and is a current graduate student for poetry at Cleveland State University’s NEOMFA program. She is also the poetry editor for Gordon Square Review. Her work has appeared in A Race Anthology: Dispatches and Artifacts From a Segregated City and is forthcoming in December. She is the recipient of the 2016 Academy of American Poets University & College Poetry Prize for her poem “Kinsman.”