Tracie Morris is at the forefront of the burgeoning international spoken word scene. After making a name for herself in the early 1990’s at the Nuyorican Poets Café (the spoken-word mecca of New York) — in 1993 she was named champion of both the Nuyorican Grand Slam and the National Haiku Slam — Morris won acclaim for her collaborations with other artists, particularly jazz musicians such as Donald Byrd and Vernon Reid.

Morris wrote the lyrics for choreographer Ralph Lemon’s epic “Geography,” (Brooklyn Academy of Music, 1999) and is currently at work on a commissioned project for The Kitchen. Her tough and sassy hip-hop rhymes have been featured in many anthologies, as well as on radio and television, and she has toured extensively here and abroad. The Brooklyn native was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, New Faces/New Voices Fellowship, and a Franklin Furnace Artist in Exile grant, and has published two collections of poems, Chap-T-her Won and Intermission.

Poetry Center Reading:

Spring 2001