Thursday September 24th, 2009
 Black Pearl Poetry weekly series of Tempe Thursdays will include an OPEN MIC, Special Performances, and the feature- exclusively at Black Pearl Poetry for two nights- HBO Def Poet- Dasha Kelly!
MADCAP THEATERS
730 S. Mill Ave
(at Mill and Seventh next to Uno's restaurant)
Tempe, AZ
www.madcaptheaters.com
Dasha is a nationally-respected advocate for writers and the art of spoken word. Locally, she is founder and director of Still Waters Collective, an outreach initiative utilizing creative writing as tool to build new models of leadership and empowerment. Kelly’s brand of training and development has been widely requested: colleges, K-12, correctional institutions, non-profit groups, corporate teams, artists and arts organizations. In 2009, Dasha was invited to join the professional team at University of Wisconsin ’s Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives as Recruitment Director for the First Wave Urban Arts Scholarship. In addition, Dasha works to broker professional development and performance opportunities for local adult artists and writers.

In her own craft, Dasha is an accomplished writer, a seasoned performer and engaging public speaker: She has written for magazines such as Upscale, Black Enterprise and Milwaukee; her narrative essays appear regularly online; her 2003 novel, All Fall Down, earned her a place in Written Word Magazine as one of the Top Ten Up-and-Coming Writers of the Midwest; she performed on the season six premiere of HBO presents Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam; she has released four recordings of her poems; her commissioned one-woman show, Anthems for Grown Folks, is being developed into a traveling production; and she works extensively as a keynote and motivational speaker. Dasha is working on a second novel and recently released a collection of poems, essays and short stories with Penmanship Books called Hershey Eats Peanuts.

Dasha Kelly
Writer. Perfomer. Speaker. Instructor.
http://dashakelly.com