Azure Antoinette

Azure Antoinette is a poet, spoken word artist, freelance photographer, and youth and arts advocate whose performance poetry explores the ways social media is reshaping humanity.

Called "the Maya Angelou of the Millennial generation", Azure Antoinette is the author of BitterSweetCommissionedCommissioned: the Back Story and the upcoming For the Sake of Brevity.

In 2011, she founded Aalchemik Press, an independent publishing house for poetry and narrative literary work, as well as STUDIO:alchemy, an arts-in-education program that provides custom workshops that excite and educate teen girls on how spoken word, performance poetry, and social media can make an impact on the world. STUDIO:alchemy operates curriculum in New York, Iowa, and Los Angeles.

As a popular arts-in-education consultant, speaker, and workshop facilitator, Azure explores the subjects of youth poetic expression and creative writing as catharsis. She has been commissioned to write for Maria Shriver, Beats By Dr. Dre, Girl Scouts of America, The Documentary Group, California Arts Council, the late Lt. Colonel Lee Archer (Tuskegee Airman), and American Cancer Society's benefit Art 4 Life. She has recently developed new programming with ABC Family around the subject of teen voices and expression. 

In 2012, Azure was featured as one of Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women in the World, as well as in a special section "Women Helping Women."