January Feature

LeTonia Jones is a lifelong Kentuckian who has used the alchemy of arts and activism for over 25 years. She has led public arts campaigns and projects with the purpose of centering the lived experiences of those pushed to the margins, while at the same time stirring emotions, facilitating space for insight, and moving audiences and communities toward greater acts of care and love. In 2007, while employed at the Kentucky Domestic Violence Association, she collaborated with author and award-winning playwright Eve Ensler and V-Day to produce and pilot a two-week statewide arts and activism festival and awareness campaign to end violence against women and girls in Kentucky reaching 1.2 million Kentuckians. In 2009, she cocreated and co-facilitated SwallowTale Project, which entered correctional institutions. The project culminated in a book called SwallowTale Project, which featured writings from incarcerated women in Kentucky. In 2020, LeTonia co-founded Bloodroot Ink, a writing circle for Black, Indigenous, and Womyn of Color. LeTonia Jones lives in Lexington, Kentucky with her two dogs, Mojo and Peggy. Black Girl at the Intersection introduces her as a poet who believes acts of witnessing and acts of being witnessed are revolutionary. (Bio Credit: Accents Publishing) Suzanna Spearman Susanna Spearman (they/she) is a queer, Appalachian poet originally from South Carolina. They graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from Bluegrass Writers Studio in August, 2024. They live in central Kentucky with their wife, four cats, and senior chihuahua. They're a full-time ESL and English teacher. In addition to being the Secretary of Kentucky State Poetry Society, they are also co-editor of the KSPS literary journal, Pegasus. They are the director of Multifarious Collective, an organization based in central Kentucky that amplifies multilingual/multicultural poetic and artistic voices. They were the 2023 winner of the BGWS Emerging Writer Award for Poetry (selected by Bernard Clay). They have poems published in West Trade Review, Still: The Journal, Untelling Journal, Carolina Muse, UDD3R Mag, and Yearling Journal. They have pieces forthcoming in Verses from the Underground and Meow Meow Pow Pow Lit. (Bio credit: LexPoMo.com)