“never let a statue tell me how nice I am” (Malik Izaak Taylor)
This is a collection of interviews with artists, whose creative work, primarily as written and spoken words, focuses to negotiate multiple audiences that cross racial lines. The interviews were conducted by Anthony Sutton and Nicole Zaza. Editing and composition by Anthony Sutton.
In her spare time, Camisha Broussard, author of Daddy Issues, a Memoir, raises her toddler son, acts as life-coach and advisor to her three adult sons, prepares Avocado smoothies for her husband, and teaches college freshmen how to not hate writing. With every other minute of the day, she writes. She found her writer’s home at Chicago State University, where she earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Speech Communications, and later her MFA in Creative Writing. Her essay, “The Finger Points Both Ways,” published and curated In Medium.com and later gained the attention of PS I Love You #Pitchwar editors with her essay “My Husband Likes Straight Lines, While I Prefer Curves.”
Sam Demaris was recently named one of “15 of the Funniest Stand-up Comedians You SHOULD Be Following” by Will Ferrell’s Funnyordie.com and once you see him, you’ll know why. His bizarre sense of humor combined with his unique storytelling ability and universal appeal have made him one of the most sought after comedians working today. Keep your eyes peeled. This guy is soon to become a household name. He has appeared on Laughs on Fox, the Maximuh Magazine Real Men of Comedy tour as well as tours all over the globe to perform for the United States Armed Forces. Yeah. He did that.
A Louisiana native, born in Baton Rouge and currently residing in New Orleans, Amani Francis is a former educator and lifelong learner. Francis is currently a small business owner and creative consultant and her latest creative endeavors include creating a set of crystal oracle cards and writing a book of practical, everyday manifestation practices which she plans to self-publish. In her spare time, Francis enjoys homeschooling her children, writing, gardening, and studying ancient Autochthonous Cultural History, spirituality and metaphysics.
Autumn Knight is an interdisciplinary artist working with performance, installation, video and text. Her performance work has been on view at various institutions including DiverseWorks Artspace, Art League Houston, Project Row Houses, Blaffer Art Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum, Skowhegan Space (NY), The New Museum, The Contemporary Art Museum Houston, Optica (Montreal, Canada), The Poetry Project (NY) and Krannart Art Museum (IL), The Institute for Contemporary Art (VCU), Human Resources Los Angeles (HRLA) and Akademie der Kunste, (Berlin). Knight has been an artist in residence with In-Situ (UK), Galveston Artist Residency, YICA (Yamaguchi, Japan), Artpace (San Antonio, TX) and a 2016-2017 artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem (NY). Knight is the recipient of an Artadia Award (2015) and an Art Matters Grant (2018). She has served as visiting artist at Montclair State University, Princeton University and Bard College. Her performance work is held in the permanent collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2016) and holds an M.A. in Drama Therapy from New York University.
JD Pluecker works with language, writes, translates, organizes, interprets, and creates. In 2010, they co-founded the transdisciplinary collaborative Antena Aire and in 2015 the local social justice interpreting collective Antena Houston. JD’s undisciplinary work is informed by experimental poetics, language justice, radical aesthetics/politics, and cross-border/cross-language cultural production. They have translated numerous books from the Spanish, including most recently Gore Capitalism (Semiotext(e), 2018) and Antígona González (Les Figues Press, 2016). Their book of poetry and image, Ford Over, was released in 2016 from Noemi Press. JD is a member of the Macondo Writing Workshop and has exhibited work at Blaffer Art Museum, the Hammer Museum, Project Row Houses, and more. More info at www.johnpluecker.com and www.antenaantena.org.
Anthony Sutton resides on former Akokiksas, Atakapa, Karankawa, and Sana land (currently named Houston, TX) and has had poems appear or forthcoming in Southern Indiana Review, Indianapolis Review, Grist, Gulf Coast, The Journal, Passages North, Prairie Schooner, Puerto del Sol, Quarter After Eight, and elsewhere.
Mexican and Chicana poet Stalina Emmanuelle Villarreal is an experimental poet whose repertoire includes electronic poetry and poetry performed in conjunction with other art forms. She performs internationally and was recently a featured poet in the Public Poetry Reading Series. She is also a translator and an instructor of English at a community college. She has an MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts. Her work can be found in Papeles de Manscupia, El Vértigo de los Aires: Encuentro Iberoamericano en el Centro Histórico 2009, and Her Kind. Her visual poetry was part of the Antena Books exhibit at University of Houston’s Blaffer Art Museum.
Nicole Zaza worked as an editor for Gulf Coast and Envy Magazine. She graduated with an MFA from the UH Creative Writing Program. She teaches writing classes in Houston.
