Michelle Myers

Michelle is a spoken word poet who aims to raise awareness about social injustices and build positive relationships across communities. With over 14 years of experience, she believes that poetry can be a bridge to community building where people learn, reflect, communicate, share, compromise, and connect.  She teaches at the Community College of Philadelphia and is a founding member of Yellow Rage, a dynamic duo of Philly-based Asian American spoken word poets, and has showcased her work at multiple events, including HBO’s Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry. On the page and stage, she explores intersections of race, culture, gender, community, and self. By sharing her emotions and experiences, she draws in disparate and marginalized people to create a balanced vision of community and translates that vision into reality. 

Michelle will create the Write the World project, an artistic outreach endeavor, to provide an outlet for artistic expression and a creative community for underserved children in communities around the world.  Beginning in Nicaragua, Michelle and her change partner, Kao, will offer visual art, storytelling, and poetry workshops for children at the Barrio Planta Project school in San Juan del Sur, help them compile their work into a chapbook, and begin to connect the children in Nicaragua to children in St. Paul, MN, through a pen pal/art exchange.  The three main goals of the project are to help staff at Barrio Planta Project create a local space for cathartic artistic expression, empowerment, and community-building among the children; to raise awareness first in the Philadelphia-area and then around the United States about the children's experiences with the intense intersection of poverty, culture, and the tourist industry in San Juan del Sur, including their struggles and triumphs; and for Michelle and Kao, to engage in a reciprocal process of teaching and learning with the children as they navigate language, culture, and experience in sharing and documenting their artwork.