Poet, curator, mentor, and community organizer Cheryl Boyce-Taylor reads and discusses new work, dialects, and family with host Patricia Spears-Jones.
Cheryl Boyce-Taylor is the winner of the 2022 Publishing Triangle’s Audre Lorde Award for her verse memoir, Mama Phife Represents, which stands as a tribute to her late son, hip hop icon Malik “Phife Dawg” Taylor of A Tribe Called Quest. Alongside Mama Phife Represents, her five collections of poetry, Raw Air, Night When Moon Follows, Convincing The Body, and Arrival. Cheryl’s latest work, We Are Not Wearing Helmets published by Northwestern University Press facilitated poetry workshops for Cave Canem, Poets & Writers, and The Caribbean Literary and Cultural Center. Her poetry has been commissioned by The Joyce Theater and the National Endowment for the Arts for Ronald K. Brown: Evidence, A Dance Company. A VONA fellow, her work has been published in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, The Mom Egg Review and Adrienne. Cheryl earned an MFA in Poetry from Stonecoast: The University of Southern Maine, and an MSW from Fordham University. Her life papers and portfolio are stored at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City.