#ObsidianVoices

Karma Mayet, a multidisciplinary performer and writer, has travelled across the U.S. and internationally, working in the theater with directors including Robert Wilson and Bill T. Jones, and with musicians including Toshi Reagon, Lizz Wright, Vernon Reid, Meshell Ndegeocello, and The Roots. She is composer/librettist of Indigo, a Blues opera. Her work has been supported by The Field, the D.C. Humanities Council, and the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund (for fiction). Karma is currently a member of the cast of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, the opera, which toured to four continents in its first year. Her play, Race Card, and was deemed “powerful, political theater” by the New York Times. As creator of the Rootsong™ practice, she shares the transformative process of somatic improvisation in cultural organizations and with individuals.

Elizabeth Miller is a second-generation fine artist. Dance/ performance art is part of her repertoire; she performs locally and internationally. Her fine art has been shown nationwide but also internationally in Japan, Indonesia, and England. She has a BA in Art and Design from Towson University and an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. She has been a teaching artist for the last eighteen years and currently is an art teacher for Baltimore County Public schools. She creates hair sculptures, performance art, and film. Her films capture black bodies cleansing and blessing previously traumatic space for black and brown bodies. She has been a guest speaker at Johns Hopkins University and Maryland Institute College of Art.

Moderator

Duriel E. Harris is a writer, performer, artist, and scholar. She is author of three critically acclaimed volumes of poetry, including No Dictionary of a Living Tongue (Nightboat, 2017), Drag (2003), and Amnesiac: Poems (2010). Multi-genre works include the one-woman theatrical performance Thingification, the video collaboration Speleology (2011), and the sound+image project “Blood Labyrinth.” Cofounder of The Black Took Collective, Harris is Professor of Poetry and Poetics at Illinois State University and Editor in Chief of the award-winning publishing platform Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora.