PhillyCAM and Moonstone Present
M. Nzadi Keita with Sinnea Douglas & Tracey Ferdinand
Moonstone Poetry Series Presents Mentor and Mentored
An intergenerational poetry series that presents both the mentor and the mentored: how does poetry travel from generation to generation, what are the themes, the sounds, what changes and what stays the same. Filmed with a live audience at the PhillyCAM Studio, the program will be edited and broadcast.
M. Nzadi Keita is a Philly-born writer, editor, scholar and teacher. Her first book of poems, Birthmarks, documents a generation of African-Americans who experienced the Great Migration from the rural South to the urban North.
She has received fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts for poetry and the Leeway Foundation for scholarship. Poet Lore Journal most recently published Keita’s work. Her poems also appear in anthologies including Peace Is A Haiku Song, A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry, Confirmation: An Anthology of African-American Women, and The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South.
She has worked on projects with the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, WHYY, and Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program. Having once been a cashier, a data entry clerk, a security guard, a freelance journalist, and a community educator, Keita is now a professor at Ursinus College, where she teaches creative writing and contemporary American literature.
Sinnea Douglas is a junior English major at Ursinus College. She first began writing poetry in the 9th grade. She spent most of her high school years perfecting her craft and traveling with the Philly Youth Poetry Movement, performing on stages throughout the country.
Tracey Ferdinand holds a master’s degree in Africana Women’s Studies from Clark Atlanta University and a bachelor’s degree in English from Ursinus College. Her main areas of interest and research are Africana women’s literature, womanism, and narrative medicine.