Erika Dickerson-Despenza

Erika Dickerson-Despenza is a Blk feminist Pushcart Prize nominated poet-turned-playwright, educator and grassroots organizer from Chicago, Illinois. She’s a 2018-2019 Dramatists Guild Foundation Playwriting Fellow and The Lark’s 2018 Van Lier New Voices Fellow. She is a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Obie-winning Youngblood collective. Her work has been developed at The Public Theater, The Lark, New York Stage and Film, and Jackalope Theater. Select stage plays include: a water tetralogy examining water as a reflection of Blk women’s bodies as sites of consciousness development and exile during key events in Black History: ocean’s lip/heaven’s shore (the Middle Passage), took/tied hung/split (Jim Crow), shadow/land (Hurricane Katrina), and cullud wattah (Flint Water Crisis).