Yasmine Bolden is a 2023 Best of the Net Black American poet, part-time creative writing coach, and racial justice advocate dedicated to nurturing the voices of and creating accessibility for young BIPOC involved in the arts. A Juneteenth Resiliency Awardee and Pushcart Prize nominee, she's also the curator of the Black Youth Create online creative exhibit as well as a National Museum of African American History and Culture YHI alumna and co-founder of Hopkins' Bluejays & Poets and the Tenderheart Collective. She interns with the Johns Hopkins University Center for Social Concern and attends Johns Hopkins University as a Writing Seminars and Africana Studies double major. She will be researching Black Feminist Poetics and Lucille Clifton as a JHU Racism, Immigration, and Citizenship Undergraduate Grant awardee in the summer of 2023 and will begin training as a Writers In Baltimore Schools Teaching Fellow in the fall of the same year. 

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She performs in and writes micro-productions for DMV area theatre and her writing and thoughts have been recognized by or appeared in Teen Vogue, the Scholastic Writing Awards, National Beta Club Poetry Competition, the Feminist Center for Creative Work, and the I, Too, Am the Dream Contest.  Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Love Letters: To the Mothers and Fathers of the African Diaspora anthology, Perhappened Magazine, Footwork Journal, Salima Magazine, and Alocasia, Good for Youth (formerly Zenerations), The Lickety Split among others, and been commissioned by Writopia Lab.

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At heart, she's still the voracious reader who talked her way into getting more than the five book limit from her elementary school library. You can find out more about her in the about tab, on Twitter @blkpunningpoet, and on Instagram @blackpunningpoet. 

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