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About Porsha

Porsha Olayiwola is the 2014 Individual World Poetry Slam Champion and 2015 National Poetry Slam Champion. Black, poet, queer-dyke, hip-hop feminist, womanist: Porsha is a native of Chicago who now resides in Boston where she organizes, writes and teaches. Porsha co-founded The House Slam, Boston’s first poetry slam venue and coaches their award winning poetry slam team. In 2018, Porsha was named by GK100 as one of Boston’s Most Influential People of Color. She is the Artistic Director at MassLEAP, a literary non-profit organization in Massachusetts serving youth artists. A Create Well grantee, Olayiwola is releasing a choreopoem and theatrical production entitled Black & Ugly as Ever in the fall of 2018. She is an MFA Candidate at Emerson College. As an artist, Porsha writes infra-politically to tell the stories that are silenced, erased, or difficult to release from the tip of the tongue. She has a book forthcoming in 2019 with Button Poetry. Her goal is to maintain a cipher of self that is uncontrollable, undocumented and just plain ole dope.