Lenelle Moïse (born c. 1980) is a poet, actress and playwright born in
Port-au-Prince
Port-au-Prince ( ; ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Haiti, most populous city of Haiti. The city's population was estimated at 1,200,000 in 2022 with the metropolitan area estimated at a population of 2,618,894. The me ...
,
Haiti
Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti, is a country on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and south of the Bahamas. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island, which it shares with the Dominican ...
. Currently based in the United States, she performs at colleges throughout the country, presenting work about
race,
gender
Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...
,
class
Class, Classes, or The Class may refer to:
Common uses not otherwise categorized
* Class (biology), a taxonomic rank
* Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects
* Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used d ...
,
immigration
Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as Permanent residency, permanent residents. Commuting, Commuter ...
and
sexuality
Human sexuality is the way people experience and express themselves sexually. This involves biological, psychological, physical, erotic, emotional, social, or spiritual feelings and behaviors. Because it is a broad term, which has varied ...
. Her spoken word CD ''Madivinez'' won the 2007 Patchwork Majority Radio Album Award for Best Solo Album. Moïse was a member of the permanent ensemble cast in the Culture Project's premiere production of ''Rebel Voices'', a play by Rob Urbinati based on
Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922January 27, 2010) was an American historian and a veteran of World War II. He was chair of the history and social sciences department at Spelman College, and a political science professor at Boston University. Zinn ...
and Anthony Arnove's book ''Voices of a People's History of the United States.'' In 2008, she developed a two-person vocal musical about art, infamy and race called ''EXPATRIATE'', also at the Culture Project, in which she co-starred with
Karla Cheatham-Mosley. When she was a junior at
Ithaca College
Ithaca College is a private college in Ithaca (town), New York, Ithaca, New York. It was founded by William Egbert in 1892 as a Music school, conservatory of music. Ithaca College is known for its media-related programs and entertainment program ...
, Lenelle co-wrote ''Sexual Dependency'', a feature film by Bolivian filmmaker Rodrigo Bellot who was a schoolmate at the time. The film went on to win the International Film Critics' Award at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland. Moïse also wrote and starred in Mara Alper's short experimental video "To Erzulie" which premiered at the Berlin Sommerfest der Literaturen in July 2002. She has completed her own experimental shorts "Blue Passersby Eyes" and "Atlantic Soul." Her homemade music video ''Pied Piper'' was an official selection of the International Museum of Women 2007 Online Film Festival. Her essays and poems are published in a number of anthologies, most recently
Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders of the Spoken Word Revolution' (Seal Press). Her debut book ''Haiti Glass'' (City Lights Publishers, April 2014), part of the
Sister Spit Sister Spit was a lesbian-feminist spoken-word and performance art collective based in San Francisco, signed to Mr. Lady Records. They formed in 1994 and disbanded in 2006. Founding members included Michelle Tea and Sini Anderson, Other members i ...
series, is a collection of verse and prose. She experiments with collage as a form of meditative practice and nonlinear storytelling.
Theatre
She earned an MFA in Playwriting from Smith College in 2004. Her two-act play Merit won the 2011–2012 Ruby Prize. In 2008, the Culture Project launched the Off-Broadway production of Expatriate, her critically acclaimed two-woman show with all-vocal music (download The New York Times review). Her other plays include: Matermorphosis, Little Griot, Spilling Venus, The Many Faces of Nia, Cornered in the Dark, and Purple. As an actress, she co-stars with Karla Mosley in Expariate and appeared in the Off-Broadway production of Rebel Voices, a play based on the book Voices of a People's History of the United States.
Publications
Lenelle’s poems and essays are featured in several anthologies, including: Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution and We Don't Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists. Her writing has also been published in the Platte Valley Review, Utne Reader, Make/Shift Magazine, Left Turn, Rethinking Schools, the legendary OurChart.com and Velvetpark Magazine. In 2008, she was a featured writer for The Golden Notebook Project, the Institute for the Future of the Book’s online experiment in collective close-reading.
*''Haiti Glass'' (
City Lights Publishers
City Lights is an independent bookstore-publisher combination in San Francisco, California, that specializes in world literature, the arts, and progressive politics. It also houses the nonprofit City Lights Foundation, which publishes selected t ...
, 2014)
References
*
* Chapter 3, pp. 29–42.
*
*
*
*
External links
Official websiteTwitter page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Moise, Lenelle
1980s births
Haitian emigrants to the United States
Ithaca College alumni
Living people
Actresses of Haitian descent
American women poets
21st-century American poets
21st-century American women writers
Year of birth missing (living people)