THE NDUSTRY TALKS WITH WRITE AND PERFORMER EBONY PAYNE-ENGLISH

THIS WEEK, THE NDUSTRY TALKS WITH WRITER AND PERFORMER EBONY PAYNE-ENGLISH!

Ebony Payne-English is a writer, performer, educator, and human rights activist, from Jacksonville, FL. She is the first woman to establish her own chapter of the international poetry organization, Black on Black Rhyme. Ebony is a 2015 Southern Fried Poetry Slam double finalist as well as the winner of Florida Urban Culture’s 2015 award for Most Influential Artist. Through her philanthropic work with Black on Black Rhyme Jax Foundation and Jax Youth Poetry Slam, Ebony has maintained a 100% college attendance rate amongst graduating mentees for the last 5 years. In her 13 years of professional experience, Ebony’s performance accolades include The New Orleans House of Blues; Essence Festival; Nuyorican Café; Apache Cafe; Denver Mercury Slam; The Cummer Museum, TEDxFSCJ, as well as  colleges, universities, and prestigious entertainment venues nationwide. Her discography includes 3 critically acclaimed poetry albums: Old Soul (2006), Struggle’s Embrace (2010), EbEnFlo (2012) and the highly anticipated hip hop debut, Know Love, was released July of 2015. Ebony has taught invitational workshops at venues such as the Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts; Morgan State University; Brave New Voices; the National Afterschool Programming Conference and the Department of Juvenile Justice. In her role as Curriculum Development Manager for EEAP, Ebony authored a nationally accredited K-12 entrepreneurially centered STEAM curriculum and children’s book series currently facilitated in over 48 programs across the US. To add to her host of accomplishments, Ebony’s 42 poem collection, Secrets of Ma’at, hit shelves Octover, 4th 2016 and is currently available on Amazon. Ebony is a member of the Advisory Council for Southern Fried Regional Poetry Conference and is the Director for The Performers Academy in Jacksonville, FL.