Steven Willis
Steven Antoine Willis is a performance poet and educator from Chicago, IL, whose work centers identity and one’s personal ways of knowing. With work that explores African American culture and collective memory, Willis blends the rigor of literary craft and the urgency of theatrical intention, drawing influences from hip hop, theatrical training, social pedagogy, and religion to build both his characters and his worlds.
A three-time Individual World Poetry Slam finalist, Willis has contributed to The BreakBeat Poets anthology and the National Council of Teachers of English Journal. He holds an MFA in Acting from the University of Iowa, completed the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in poetry, and earned an M.S.Ed. in Education Entrepreneurship from the University of Pennsylvania. His debut poetry collection, A Peculiar People, was published by Button Poetry. He is widely consider one of the most influential slam poets of the last decade.
