A historian at heart, reporter by (w)right, rebel by reason, Walidah Imarisha is an educator, writer, organizer and spoken word artist.
She teaches in Portland State University's Black Studies Department, Oregon State University's Women's Studies Department and Southern New Hampshire University's English Department. She has also facilitated poetry and journalism workshops third grade to twelfth, in community centers, youth detention facilities, and women’s prisons.
A historian at heart, reporter by (w)right, rebel by reason, Walidah Imarisha is an educator, writer, organizer and spoken word artist.
Walidah has toured the country several times performing, lecturing and challenging. She has shared the stage with folks as different as Angela Davis, Cornel West, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Kenny Muhammad of the Roots, Chuck D, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Umar bin Hassan from The Last Poets, Boots Riley, Saul Williams, Ani DiFranco, John Irving, dead prez and Yuri Kochiyama.
Walidah is one half of the poetry duo Good Sista/Bad Sista, and has appeared on Puerto Punx band Ricanstruction’s second album Love and Revolution and toured nationally and internationally with them.
Walidah was one of the editors for the first anthology to be released about Sept. 11 and the aftermath, Another World is Possible, and has had her words featured in Total Chaos: The Art And Aesthetics of Hip Hop, Letters From Young Activists, Daddy, Can I Tell You Something, Word Warriors, and The Quotable Rebel, as well as the soon-to-be-released anthologies Joe Strummer: Punk Rock Warlord and Life During Wartime: Resisting Counterinsurgency.
One of the founders and first editor of the political hip hop publication AWOL Magazine, Walidah served on the editorial board for the national Left Turn Magazine. She is also the director and co-producer of the Katrina documentary Finding Common Ground in New Orleans.
Walidah spent six years on the board of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, and helped to found the the Human Rights Coalition, a group of prisoners’ families and former prisoners with three chapters in Pennsylvania.
