Camisha Jones
Camisha L. Jones is the author of Flare, a poetry chapbook published by Finishing Line Press in 2017 focused on her experiences with hearing loss and chronic pain. Her poems have been published in The New York Times, Poets.org, Button Poetry, The Deaf Poets Society, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Typo, The Quarry, and elsewhere. Other writing can be found at VIDA: Women in Literary Arts’ website and Class Lives: Stories From Across Our Economic Divide, published by ILR Press in 2014.
Photograph by Brendan Woods.
In 2022, Jones was named a Disability Futures Fellow, which is a multidisciplinary award designed to amplify the work of disabled creatives supported by United States Artists, the Ford Foundation, and Mellon Foundation. She is also Franklin & Marshall College’s 2017 Lapine Poetry Fellow and one of the Loft Literary Center’s 2017 Spoken Word Immersion Fellows. She competed at the 2013 National Poetry Slam on behalf of Slam Richmond. She is a co-editor with Travis Chi Wing Lau, Naomi Ortiz, and Michael Northen for Every Place on the Map is Disabled, a forthcoming anthology of disability poetry and essays.
As a facilitator, Jones has cofounded and led an annual college-level anti-bias retreat, developed and implemented a social justice book discussion series, supported youth leadership trainings, and conducted writing workshops. She has close to 30 years’ experience organizing and leading programs, gatherings, and people at nonprofits and institutions of higher education.
Jones served as managing director at Split This Rock, a national nonprofit that cultivates, teaches, and celebrates poetry that bears witness to injustice and provokes social change. Among her work there, she organized the nonprofit’s biennial poetry festival, served as an editor for the “Poem of the Week” series, and worked diligently to expand the organization’s commitment to accessibility and disability justice. She currently cultivates virtual space for disabled artists to gather and connect as Co-Producer of LAB at the internationally-recognized disability arts ensemble Kinetic Light.