Ancestral Messengers: A Black Conjure Reading & Conversation

Live on Instagram and Facebook @acorncenter4freedom. To support this event we ask for folks to purchase the poster of Lisbeth White's "Mythical" from APOGEE here

Our Messengers 

Lisbeth White (she/they) is a lover of the earth, wanderer of lands, poet, dancer, expressive arts therapist, Kemetic Reiki practitioner, elemental energy healer, listener, and  ancestor celebrant. She is certain our collective liberation is intricately tied to ancestral earth wisdom and firmly believes each of us has boundless capacity within to be our own wisest healers. A 2016 Pushcart prize nominee, Lisbeth is an alumna of VONA, Bread Loaf Environmental Conference, Tin House and Callaloo Creative Writing workshops. Her poetry has appeared in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, The Rumpus, Kweli, Blue Mountain Review, Apogee, the anthology Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California, and elsewhere. A developmental editor and expressive arts therapist, she holds a dual BA in Creative Writing and Sociology as well as an MA in Counseling Psychology. She is currently working on an experimental hybrid nonfiction project about elemental medicine and archetypal mythology. You can find her musings on Instagram: @earthmaven. 

A poet, healer, and organizer, Destiny Hemphill is based in Durham, NC, and has found homes in Texas, Tennessee, and Arkansas. She has received fellowships from Tin House, Callaloo, and Naropa University. Destiny is the author of the chapbook Oracle: a Cosmology (2018). Her work can also be found in Poetry, Carolina Quarterly, EcoTheo, The Wanderer, and elsewhere. She offers her poems as chants and rites to the sacred art of Black liberation. Destiny is the recipient of Split This Rock's 2020-2021 Poetry Coalition Fellowship.

Joël Díaz is a writer and educator currently based in Savannah, GA. His work has been featured in The Feminist Wire, Interviewing the Caribbean, and Peregrine. He has been awarded fellowships from Poets House (2018) and Callaloo (2017).  He has also completed two curatorial residencies with The Segue Foundation where he co-produced two 8-week-long reading series. He received his MFA from Washington University in Saint Louis.

Monét Noelle Marshall is a performer, director, producer, cultural organizer and creative consultant whose work sits at the nexus of equity, creativity and community-based practice. She is the Founding Artistic Director of MOJOAA Performing Arts Company, producing new works and opportunities for Black playwrights. In 2018 she received the Mary B. Regan Community Arts Fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council and was awarded the Arts Award from the Independent Weekly for her contributions to the local arts ecosystem . Most importantly, she is Robin and Bryan's daughter, Evelyne, George, Zelma and Bob's granddaughter. She is a sister, friend and partner who knows that art ain’t innocent, to be Black and creative is the same thing and that her grandmothers are artists.