Conviction.
Spoken word poetry performances, workshops and curriculum development have taken Crystal Leigh around the world from New Orleans, Louisiana, to Hawassa, Ethiopia. From upstate New York to Managua, Nicaragua, Crystal Leigh delivers powerfully through performance. Check out her most recent TEDx talk hosted by Hamilton College entitled “Re-Mixing Master Narratives through Spoken Word Poetry”
Crystal Leigh’s first book, The Fifth Element: Social Justice Pedagogy Through Spoken Word Poetry was released in March 2016 by SUNY Press and explores spoken word poetry as a tool for social justice, critical feminist pedagogy, and new ways of teaching and learning. Her second co- authored book entitled Open Mic Night: College Programming that Champions Student Voice was awarded a 2018 Outstanding Book Award by Division B from the American Educational Research Association. Crystal Leigh’s scholarship has been published in Girlhood Studies, Feminist Formations, Transformations, Journal of Black Masculinities, and Words, Beats, Life among others.
Freedom from fear.
Two-time co-host of the Zanzibar International Film Festival Music and Performing Arts stage, Crystal Leigh has collaborated with communities in Tanzania since 2006. Her most recent scholarship-activism focuses on how spoken word poetry and performance can connect girls to each other globally, impact their communities, and inform government policy. From 2015-2019 Crystal Leigh co-directed the creative performance of the Girls Speak Out! program at the United Nations for International Day of the Girl hosted at the UN Headquarters each year in the month of October. She was the co-chair of the Working Group on Girls, Girls Participation committee from 2015-2020, where she trains high school girls for political advocacy at the UN. Her community-based work with global girls is rooted in a deep belief in the ethics of love and the transformative power of spoken word poetry.