Aja Monet

”I am a surrealist blues poet, storyteller, and organizer born and raised in Brooklyn, NY.”

The youngest poet to win the legendary Nuyorican Poets Café Grand Slam poetry award title, aja monet follows in the long legacy and tradition of poets participating and assembling in social movements. Her first full collection of poems is titled, My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter. 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 work in South Florida. aja monet co-founded a political safe-haven for artists and organizers in Little Haiti called, Smoke Signals Studio. She facilitates “Voices: Poetry for the People,” a workshop and collective in collaboration with Community Justice Project and Dream Defenders. She currently lives in Miami, Florida where she is working on her next full collection of poems entitled, Florida Water.