Camisha Jones

Camisha Jones (she/her) is a writer, spoken word poet, workshop facilitator, and gathering cultivator. She is the author of the poetry chapbook Flare (Finishing Line Press, 2017) which focuses on her experiences with hearing loss and chronic pain. Her poems have been published in The New York Times, Poets.org, Button Poetry, The Deaf Poets Society, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Typo, The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database at Split This Rock, and elsewhere.

Camisha is a 2022 Disability Futures Fellow, which provides a multidisciplinary award designed to amplify the work of disabled creatives supported by United States Artists, the Ford Foundation, and Mellon Foundation. She was also selected as Franklin & Marshall College’s 2017 Lapine Poetry Fellow and one of the Loft Literary Center’s 2017 Spoken Word Immersion Fellows. She is a Fellow of The Watering Hole and competed at the 2013 National Poetry Slam on behalf of Slam Richmond. She is a co-editor with Travis Chi Wing Lau, Naomi Ortiz, and Michael Northen for Every Place on the Map is Disabled, a forthcoming anthology of disability poetry and essays.

Camisha has close to 30 years’ experience organizing and leading programs, gatherings, and people at nonprofits and institutions of higher education. Currently, she cultivates virtual space for disabled artists to gather and connect as a Co-Producer of LAB with the internationally-recognized disability arts ensemble Kinetic Light. For nearly 9 years prior to this role, she was Managing Director at the national social justice poetry non-profit Split This Rock in DC. There, she provided leadership for four poetry festivals, a poem of the week series, readings, open mics, a bi-monthly writing workshop series, and the expansion of the organization's core commitment to accessibility and disability inclusion practices.

You can find Camisha on Facebook as Poet Camisha Jones, on Twitter as @1Camisha, and on Instagram as @1camisha