Rental Partner: University of Washington Office of Public Lectures presents
Healthcare Where All Can Thrive
Advocating For Older LGBTQ Adults with Carey Candrian
Rental Partner: Seattle Arts & Lectures presents
aja monet
Florida Water
EVENT NOTES
Doors for this event will open at 6:30 PM.
Presented by Seattle Arts & Lectures. For questions about this event, please contact boxoffice@lectures.org or call (206) 621-2230.
As a community organizer, poet, and musician, aja monet moves between mediums, each one an element to her writing. Building off a tradition rooted in oratorical facility, monet is the conduit for her predecessors to channel through.
She is the author of the poetry collection My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter (Haymarket Books, 2017), and of two chapbooks, The Black Unicorn Sings and Inner-City Cyborgs and Ciphers. monet also co-edited Chorus: A Literary Mixtape alongside poet-actor-director Saul Williams. Her newest book, Florida Water, is out from Haymarket Books in June 2025.
Inspired by the cleansing water often used in spiritual baths, Florida Water is an ode to the myriad ways a poem can rinse, reflect, reveal, and unravel us. An honest meditation on migrating to South Florida for love, connection, and community, these poems lay bare the challenging dance between the role of the artist, lover, and organizer. monet confronts the interpersonal truths of community organizing while also uncovering the state’s fraught history with racial prejudice, maroon communities, and natural disasters. This intimate collection of lyrical poems are the artifacts of her search for belonging and healing as she wades through the rising tides of climate change, heartbreak, and systemic violence.
Read More
monet cut her teeth within the walls of the legendary Nuyorican Poets Café, where she won the title of Grand Slam Champion in 2007 at age 19, making her the youngest Grand Slam Champion in the venue’s history.
Her debut album, when the poems do what they do, was nominated for a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album in 2024. The album explores themes of resistance, love, and the inexhaustible quest for joy. These are poems of urgency and want, and the rallying cry to demolish the insidious systems from which our futures seem to be wrought. In other words, “If we had a sense of humor we’d be more radical. More migrant than citizen we’d breathe the air clean and ration our resources…we would melt ALL the guns.” monet crafts a work that can be entered from many doors. These aren’t poems for poets, but poems for everyone.
Awarded the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Award for Poetry (2019), the Nelson Mandela Changemaker Award (2024), The Harry Belafonte Voices for Social Justice Award (2024), and the Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Vanguard Award (2025), monet also serves as the Artistic Creative Director for V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls. In 2022, she created “VOICES,” an audio play amplifying the stories of black women across the diaspora and the African continent.
monet graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
Q&A with Kiesha B. Free
Kiesha B. Free is a dynamic speaker, host, and cultural strategist with a career spanning technology, publishing, and the performing arts. A former director at Microsoft, the Spelman alumna is now devoted to helping people move through harmful conditioning to connect with a truer self, a nurturing community and the truth of life’s possibilities. She has hosted stirring keynote conversations with luminaries like Will Smith, Megan Rapinoe, Lenny Kravitz, and Bozoma Saint John, along with countless everyday truth-tellers. Organizations such as Workhuman, Reaching Out MBA, and Miami Book Fair have counted on her to design and deliver transformational moments that inform and inspire. Kiesha is also the creator of YOU Better!, a podcast about evolution and self-liberation, and the founder of Hey, Black Seattle!, a digital & cultural hub supporting Black community and well-being in the Puget Sound.
Events are offered for informational, entertainment, and educational purposes only. Read Town Hall’s Program Content Policy.
Upcoming Events
3 events found.
Rental Partner: KUOW presents
Year in Review 2025
Hosted by Bill Radke
Rental Partner: Fever presents
Candlelight Concert
The Best of Hans Zimmer