Join hosts Chibbi and Eddie V as we welcome Shadow and Dr. Henzbo to the Words & Sh*t stage!
Akin "Shadow" Sawyerr is the Executive Director, and former president, of Southern Fried Poetry, Inc which owns and operates Southern Fried Poetry Slam an annual Spoken Word and Performance Poetry tournament now entering its 29th year. Recently, he produced and Organized the world's first 3D Avatar Poetry Festival, a 3-day virtual poetry festival featuring Head to Head Haiku Deathmatch, Nerd Slam and creative writing workshops. Sawyerr is also a founding member and former president of Black on Black Rhyme, LLC. For over fifteen years, he has served as host and producer of over 100 spoken word poetry events in Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina and Texas. He is the owner/photographer of March 4orth Design, Inc.
Dr. Adam "Henzbo" Henze is a researcher, educator, and spoken word artist, and has shared his work in over 30 states, as well as Puerto Rico, Canada, England, and Ireland. He is the co-founder of Slam Camp, a summer writing academy for teenage poets, and is the director of The Power of a Sentence, a writing workshop series at a women’s prison in Indianapolis.
Adam earned a PhD in Literacy, Culture, and Language Education at Indiana University, where he also works as a Research Associate at the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community. He currently serves as a Bureau Speaker for Indiana Humanities, is the Master of Ceremonies at the Missouri Scholar’s Academy, and is the Official Poet of the Indianapolis 500. Adam has facilitated educational programming at over a dozen prisons and juvenile detention centers in IN, FL, KY, IL, and AR. Articles about his work as an artist and educator have appeared in The Japan Times, NPR, PBS, Big Ten Network, Chalkbeat, USA Today, and The Indianapolis Star. Adam is a Program Director at Southern Fried Poetry, Inc., which hosts one of the largest and longest-running poetry slam festivals in the world.
