Flare - Paperback

Jones, Camisha L.: - In 2010, Camisha L. Jones left a full-time job at her alma mater, the University of Richmond, to focus on writing. She had no clue what that meant. Lucky for her, she discovered Slam Richmond where she fell further in love with the craft and performance of poetry. As an active part of the spoken word community in Virginia, she has competed at the 2013 National Poetry Slam and performed at statewide gatherings such as Virginia Festival of the Book and James River Writers conference. She and her husband Anthony Amos co-led Verbs and Vibes Open Mic series in Charlottesville, Virginia for three years through his company SKIES THE LIMIT Entertainment. Camisha's poems can be found at Button Poetry, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Typo, The Deaf Poets Society, Rogue Agent, pluck!, the Dyer Arts Center's Unfolding the Soul of Black Deaf Expressions exhibition book, and The Quarry, Split This Rock's online social justice poetry database. Her writing is often shaped by her experiences with Ménière's Disease and fibromyalgia, as well as her 16 years of work leading community service and anti-bias initiatives at non-profits and institutions of higher education. She is also published in Urban Views Weekly newspaper, Let's Get Real: What People of Color Can't Say and Whites Won't Ask about Racism (StirFry Seminars & Consulting, Inc., 2011), Class Lives: Stories from Across Our Economic Divide (ILR Press, 2014), and The Day Tajon Got Shot (Shout Mouse Press, 2017). Camisha was awarded a 2017 Spoken Word Immersion Fellowship from The Loft Literary Center. She is Managing Director at Split This Rock, a national non-profit based in DC that cultivates, teaches, and celebrates poetry that bears witness to injustice and provokes social change.