Miesha’s second collection confronts social norms while carefully considering love, challenges, personal truth, and what it means to be a Black woman in America.

Miesha will be joined by Jake-ann Jones, Sara Ries Dziekonski, and Modern Medusa! This book release and celebration will be an evening of powerful poets speaking their truths through their brilliant and thought-provoking poems.

Miesha Brundridge is 36 years young and is STUDIO 620 Poetry showcase curator and author of “A Beautiful Disaster.” Miesha’s poetry has become mediation and peace tools. She hopes to inspire people through writing and sharing observations during her self-discovery. She was January 2019 Keep St. Pete Featured Poet. Miesha also was one of the featured poets for the St. Petersburg Warehouse Art District recipient on the “YOU GOOD” Tulley-Levine Gallery at the ArtsXchange Campus, a Poetry contest. Miesha takes part in open mics across Pinellas County. She published her first poetry memoir, A Beautiful Disaster– Sept. 2018, which took place in the setting of her 20s-30s, nearly a decade of poetry. Miesha holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Criminal Justice with a crime scene tech certification and is currently finishing her 2nd master’s in forensic psychology. She has worked with juveniles in the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice and Pinellas County schools from 2017 to the present. She enjoys making people better writers. She aspires to help increase the appreciation that reading and writing can give. 

JaNaye “Modern Medusa” Hardy is an Author and Life Coach born and raised in Saint Petersburg Florida. Modern Medusa uses her past experiences and relationships throughout her life to cultivate her coaching and literacy . Modern Medusa’s goals are to provide advocacy towards mental health, African culture and self motivation.  

Sara Ries Dziekonski holds an MFA in poetry from Chatham University. Her first book, Come In, We’re Open, won the 2009 Stevens Poetry Manuscript Competition. Her chapbooks include Snow Angels on the Living Room Floor (Finishing Line Press 2018) and Marrying Maracuyá (Main Street Rag 2021), which won the Cathy Smith Bowers Chapbook Competition. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Foundation, Slipstream, LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, Cordella Magazine, 2River View, Earth’s Daughters, Thimble Literary Magazine, Waterwheel Review, among others. She is the co-founder of Poetry Midwives Editing Services and teaches creative writing with Keep St. Pete Lit. 

Jake-ann Jones‘ writing for stage includes Portrait of The Artist as A Soul Man Dead (Penumbra Theater, St. Paul), Under Frank Observation (New York Theater Workshop), and Magic Kingdom (New Georges/Hourglass Theater Company).  She is featured in the book Women Who Write Plays: Interviews with American Dramatists and her play, Death of A Ho: A Fairy, Scarey, Whorey Tale was published by Theater Communications Group (TCG) in their anthology, Plays from The Boom Box Galaxy. She is most happy about becoming the 2022 Artist Laureate for Creative Pinellas, where she developed her play AQ&REE: Brother Fire, Sister Fly with director Erica Sutherlin, and hosted nine episodes of the online show afroQuanum Experiences: ArtMaker Talks..  She organized the inaugural Tampa Bay Afrofuturism Festival in November 2022 with Pinellas Diaspora Arts Project, where she is a founding member. She recently completed the feature-length screenplay CUDHIAL for LA-based SunHaus Films. Her poetic essay RAINBOW(eyes) is featured in British photographer Gerald Jenkins’ photo-novel It’s After The End Of The World. She is the author of the Black Classic Press release Sometimes Farmgirls Become Revolutionaries: Notes on Black Power, Politics, Depression, and the FBI.  She works extensively with community organizations through the Social Justice Fund at Pinellas Community Foundation, writes for The Weekly Challenger Newspaper, and lives between Clearwater, FL, and Harlem, NYC. Visit jakeannjones.com, Follow her on Insta at @jakeann4real.