Black Vernacular: a comedic literary look at a language that’s all American

About the Artists

Kristiana Rae Colón began acting in storefront theater right out of high school. She is also a playwright, a published poet and a hip-hop artist. She has a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and works full time for a nonprofit organization located at the Juvenile Intervention Support Center at 39th Street and California Avenue (“which is essentially the juvenile police station”), where she is the office manager. She is the author of Promised Instruments. 

Randall Horton is a former recipient of the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize. He is the author of the poetry collectionsThe Lingua Franca of Ninth Street, and The Definition of Place, both from Main Street Rag. Horton is co-editor of the anthology Fingernails Across the Chalkboard Poetry and Prose on HIV/AIDs from the Black Diaspora (Third World Press, 2007). Horton has a MFA in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Poetry from Chicago State University and a PhD in Creative Writing from SUNY Albany. He is a Cave Canem Fellow. Most recently his poems, fiction and nonfiction have appeared in: Mythium, Mosaic, Black Renaissance, Crab Orchard Review and Full Moon on K Street: Poems about Washington, DC. Horton is an Assistant Professor at the University of New Haven, the poetry editor of Willow Books, and the Editor-in-Chief at Tidal Basin Review.

Adam Levin (Defcee) is a published poet, rapper, and teaching artist from River Forest, IL. A graduate and founding member of the First Wave Spoken Word and Urban Arts Learning Community at the University of Wisconsin, he has shared the stage with Saul Williams, Amiri Baraka, Wale, and the Cool Kids. He has performed internationally in London, UK, Mexico City, Mexico, and Panama City, Panama. He has been published in the University of Pennsylvania’s Esu Review, and has released three hip-hop albums.

Toni Asante Lightfoot has been living in Chicago since 2002. She’s worked with the Guild Complex, Neighborhood Writing Alliance, ETA Theater, and Young Chicago Authors where she is currently the Director of Writing Workshops. Lightfoot is a Cave Canem fellow and spent 2 years as a Soul Mountain fellow held in the retreat home of Marilyn Nelson, Poet Laureate Emeritus of Connecticut. Lightfoot’s poetry and reviews can be found in numerous anthologies, journals, and online. She is married with a lovely daughter who inspires Lightfoot to laugh, write, and dance.

About the Performer

Holly Bass is a multidisciplinary performance and visual artist, writer and director. Her best known body of work explores the endless allure of the black female body—from Venus Hottentots to video vixens. Her work has been presented at spaces such as the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian Museums, the Seattle Art Museum, and the South African State Theatre.

In 2011, she was named one of the “Top 30 Black Performance Poets” byThe Root. She was voted 2012 Best Performance Artist in the Washington CityPaper. She has received numerous grants from the DC Arts Commission and was one of twenty artists nationwide to receive Future Aesthetics grant from the Ford Foundation/Hip Hop Theater Festival. In 2014, she will pilot a year-round creative writing and performance program for adjudicated youth in DC’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services.