One of my highest priorities as an educator is to be as inclusive as possible.

Spoken word teaches that if you have the ability to express yourself and the courage to present those stories and opinions, you could be rewarded with a room full of your peers or your community who will listen.

Artistry is important. Skill, hard work, rewriting, editing, and careful, careful craft: All of these are necessary. These are what separate the beginners from experienced artists.

I want [my daughter] to look at the world through the underside of a glass-bottom boat, to look through a microscope at the galaxies that exist on the pinpoint of a human mind.

My falling in love with spoken word poetry definitely came out of that time period where all the adults around me were failing to supply me with any answers. Everyone was too busy dealing with things that were more important. I was pretty lost and invisible. And all of a sudden, this world opened up where I could get on stage and perform in front of my peers. People would listen to me and see me, and people would say, "That thing you created was important." And that was so validating and necessary at that specific moment.

For some reason there's this myth that creativity - [especially] in terms of creative writing - is a gift you either have, or you don't. So when people first start writing, if they write something that's not very good, or if they try and it's difficult, they go, "Oh, I guess I don't have it." That doesn't seem very fair, you have to try and you have to work at it. If we get scared of one bad poem and quit, that's not doing anybody any good.

Our day-to-day lives are pretty chaotic. So in terms of the writing part, you have to get pretty disciplined about finding quiet moments and making sure you're making time for the art side, on top of all the time-consuming business side.