HTBAF: How We Evolve
STORYTELLERS:
Jani Rose is a Nuyorican poet, artist, advocate, and educator, born in Spanish Harlem and raised in the Bronx. She enjoys writing and sharing her poetry, hosting and curating literary and community development opportunities, and facilitating conversations that create safe spaces for development and “becoming”. As a high school parent coordinator she supports families in the Bronx, using art and community organization for the purpose of creating awareness and equity for women and children, Puerto Rico, LGBTQIA and BIPOC communities, promulgating the arts and education as a tool for self-actualization and social justice. Jani Rose believes in poetry’s power to speak the unsaid, creating connections, reading to explore the parts of you that live in her; writing to find the parts of her that live in you.
Anastacia-Reneé (She/They) is an award-winning writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, TEDx speaker, playwright and podcaster. She is the author of Sidenotes from the Archivist (HarperCollins/Amistad) and Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere (HarperCollins/Amistad). Side Notes From The Archivist was named one of New York Public Library’s “Best Books of 2023,” and, The American Library Associations (RUSA) “Notable Books of 2024.” Anastacia-Renee has been featured on the PBS NewsHour “The Brief But Spectacular” series and she was selected by NBC News as part of the list of “Queer Artist of Color Dominate 2021’s Must See LGBTQ Art Shows,” for “(Don’t Be Absurd) Alice in Parts” an installation at the Frye Art Museum. She served as Seattle Civic Poet during Seattle’s inaugural year of UNESCO status, Hugo House Poet-in-Residence, Jack Straw Curator and 2021 Distinguished Visiting Writer-in-Residence at Seattle University. Renee is also the author of (v.) (Black Ocean) and Forget It (Black Radish). She has received fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, 4Culture, VONA, Ragdale, Mineral School, and The New Orleans Writers Residency.
Qiana Mickie is a Harlem based food systems leader, speaker, and Founding Principal of QJM Multiprise. For over 12 years, Qiana has worked to foster viable economic and climate smart opportunities in the public, private, and government sectors in particular for mixed income, communities of color, and small- mid scale food/farm businesses. She also brings this equity-driven lens to her policy work on issues such as food sovereignty, land stewardship, and climate justice. Qiana is the inaugural Executive Director for the New York City Mayor’s Office of Urban Agriculture. She leads the city’s efforts to advance urban agriculture and equity to address climate, food, and wealth disparities in NYC’s natural and built environment. Qiana is the former Executive Director of Just Food and currently serves on the USDA Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production Federal Advisory Committee. Qiana has a B.S. in Marketing from Hampton University and received her Food Hub Management certification from the University of Vermont.
Trained in Eastern and Western Herbal Medicine, Master Herbalist Karen M. Rose has dedicated her life’s work to empowering individuals to reconnect to their ancestral traditions. Karen’s inspiration for this work began as a child in her native home of Guyana, where exposure to African, Caribbean, and South American healing traditions profoundly influenced her plant medicine and community healing practice. The opening of the Brooklyn-based, Sacred Vibes Apothecary in 2009 was merely the beginning. Karen has expanded her enterprise, opening Sacred Botanica and Sacred Spice in 2020, two new locations in Brooklyn, to make healing more accessible to the greater community. Offering guidance to those on the path to wholeness, she has trained over 1000 herbalists through her Spiritual Herbalism Apprenticeship program to reclaim their legacy and heal their communities. Karen’s accomplishments include her best-selling book, the Art and Practice of Spiritual Herbalism, published in 2022, a first of its kind in the herbalism and spiritualism genre, several in-house projects such as the Sacred Vibes’ Annual NYC Spiritual Herbalism Conference, Sacred Vibes Annual Herbal Almanac, the Global Virtual Apprenticeship Program, the Spiritual Herbalism Apprenticeship Community, and the FREE Herbal Community Summer workshops.
Erica Gulliver is a wanderer. For the past 18 years she’s returned each summer to rural PA to work as the Media Director at a summer camp. The rest of the year she’s wandered – by plane, train, car, RV and converted mini school bus. Along the way she collected a film degree and diploma in graphic design. She owns a home in Honesdale, PA though she’s currently renting in Brooklyn wondering what to do with her life.
